BANCROFT 

LIBRARY 

PRICE,  5c£  CENTS. 


Southwestern 
Letters. 


NOBLEXII    PRENTIS. 


II 

• 


SOUTH-fESTERIi  LETTERS. 


. 

NOBLE  L.  PRENTIS. 


TOPEKA,  KANSAS: 

KANSAS    PUBLISHING    HOUSE. 

1882. 


F73(, 


ft  Library 


PREFACE. 


THESE  letters  from  Kansas,  New  Mexico,  Arizona  and 
Old  Mexico  were  written  for  publication  in  the  Daily 
Champion,  of  Atchison,  Kansas.  They  do  not  tell  all  there 
is  to  tell  about  the  Great  Southwest,  but  so  far  as  they  go 
they  are  accurate;  and  their  style,  or  lack  of  style,  will 
perhaps  be  quite  as  agreeable  to  the  average  reader  as 
something  more  pretentious.  N.  L,.  P. 


LETTEES. 


IN  WHICH  WE  START 5 

A  DAY  WITH  THE  MENNONITES 11 

ODDS  AND  ENDS  OF  KANSAS 21 

A  LETTER  ON  AGRICULTURE 26 

MOUNTAINS  AND  MEXICANS 33 

THE  NEW-MEXICAN  REVOLUTION 40 

FROM  LAS  VEGAS  TO  SANTA  FE 46 

HOURS  IN  SANTA  FE 54 

SOMETHING  MORE  ABOUT  SANTA  FE 60 

ALBUQUERQUE  AND  ITS  NEIGHBORHOOD 68 

SOCORRO 75 

A  GLIMPSE  OF  MEXICO 82 

SOMETHING  ABOUT  CHIHUAHUA 89 

RECOLLECTIONS  OF  CHIHUAHUA , 95 

SOME  FURTHER  JOURNEYINGS 103 

MEXICO  AND  RAILROADS Ill 

OUT  ON  THE  ATLANTIC  &  PACIFIC 117 

HOMEWARD  BOUND....  .  126 


SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 


IN  WHICH  WE  START. 


GOING  from  Atchison  to  Topeka,  your  correspondent  had  as  a 
traveling  companion  an  old  acquaintance,  who  had  just  passed 
through  the  experience  of  Americans  who  can  afford  it,  of 
"  hunting  a  climate."  After  living  in  Kansas  for  many  years, 
he  had  become  possessed  with  an  idea  that  he  would  improve  his 
atmosphere,  and  had  gone  to  what  many  people  suppose  that 
earthly  paradise,  Southern  California.  Greatly  to  his  surprise, 
the  tropical  clime,  "the  land  of  the  orange  and  palm,"  the  myrtle 
and  the  rest  of  the  botanical  resources  you  will  find  described  in 
Moore's  poetry,  turned  up,  so  to  speak,  with  a  two-hours'  snow 
storm,  and  the  human  race  in  that  part  of  the  country  was 
threatened  with  extinction  by  freezing.  This  meteorological  sur- 
prise party  was  followed  by  raw  and  cloudy  skies  and  hyperborean 
treatment  generally,  until  our  Kansas  friend  was  fain  to  return 
to  his  former  habitation.  But  not  being  ready  to  settle  down, 
he  took  a  supplementary  journey  to  Central  Iowa,  from  whence 
he  was  returning  when  this  narrative  begins.  In  Iowa  he  had 
been  greeted  with  the  rawest  and  "soakingest"  of  rains,  sulky 
clouds,  and  that  terror  of  the  Kansas  soul,  mud.  He  was  an 
elderly  man,  and  not  much  given  to  demonstrativeness,  but  it 
was  as  good  as  a  play  to  hear  his  heartfelt  ejaculation  as  he 
looked  out  of  the  car  window:  "Well,  this  is  good."  It  was  a 
perfect  spring  day  in  Kansas ;  and  all  the  world  "  lying  and  be- 
ing situate"  between  Atchison  and  Topeka  looked  as  if  God  had 
made  it  the  day  before.  So  we  ran  along  the  level  to  Parnell, 
and  climbed  the  long  slope  to  Nortonville,  and  looked  out  at  the 


6  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

lovely  country  stretching  away  for  miles  around  that  little  town, 
all  bathed  in  the  sunshine,  and  then  went  clattering  down  the 
divide  into  the  valley  of  the  Delaware,  (as  the  sensitive  people  of 
those  parts  call  it,  though  Grasshopper  will  always  be  good 
enough  for  me;)  and  looked  over  the  springing  wheat  fields, 
brighter  than  emerald,  and  then  took  the  long  ascent  where  the 
railroad  crosses  the  sharp  divide  at  Rock  Creek  station,  and  then 
we  rushed  through  the  cuts  to  Meriden,  and  then  down  again,  all 
the  way  down,  for  ten  miles,  until  the  train  dashes  out  of  the 
woods  into  the  wide  valley  of  the  Kaw,  and  the  roofs  and  spires 
of  Topeka  rise  in  the  near  distance.  And  the  sun  shone  all  the 
way,  and  our  traveled  friend  talked  all  the  fifty  miles  about  the 
State,  and  said  every  field  of  wheat  looked  bright,  from  Atchison 
to  Dodge  City,  and  that  he  would  not  give  Kansas  for  a  seat 
astride  of  the  equator;  and  "all  the  justices  concurred." 

There  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that,  according  to  usage,  precedent 
and  the  fitness  of  things,  a  State  capital  ought  to  be  a  %sleepy, 
shady  town,  with  brick  sidewalks,  and  with  no  excitement  save 
the  annual  or  biennial  meeting  of  the  Legislature,  when  it  ought 
to  be  all  torn  up  and  flustrated,  like  an  old  woman  with  the  chim- 
ney on  fire.  But  Topeka  is  undeniably  experiencing  a  genuine 
boom.  A  great  multitude  of  new  houses  are  being  built,  and 
real  estate  is  ballooning.  A  weedy,  unkempt  farm,  just  outside 
the  city,  which  a  few  years  ago  the  owner  seemed  to  think  was 
unworthy  of  cultivation,  is  now  valued  at  one  thousand  dollars 
an  acre.  The  citizens  who  formerly  lived  and  transacted  their 
affairs,  including  weather  predictions  and  the  political  manage- 
ment of  the  State  and  Nation,  on  the  sunny  side  of  Kansas  avenue, 
have  become  capitalists ;  try  to  look  as  if  they  lived  in  Boston ; 
are  interested  in  the  Colorado  mines,  the  water  works,  or  the 
electric  light;  are  accused  of  being  financially  implicated  in 
morning  newspapers;  and  have. each  erected  a  residence  in  one 
of  the  many  styles  prevalent,  from  that  of  the  Babylonish  cap- 
tivity to  the  death  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  Public  improvements 
are  going  on;  the  street  cars,  long  needed,  are  running;  water 
pipes  are  being  laid  down  on  the  street;  the  excavation  for  the 
main  building  of  the  capitol  has  begun,  and  the  capitol  square  is 


IN   WHICH   WE   START.  7 

again  in  the  state  of  chronic  disorder  which  has  characterized  it 
ever  since  it  had  an  existence;  a  huge  pile  of  rough  rock  indicates 
the  site  of  the  public  library  building  in  the  square;  and  stranger 
than  all,  a  close  observer  can  see  that  day  by  day  there  is  a 
change  in  the  massive  outlines  of  the  United  States  building  on 
the  avenue.  Whatever  report  you  may  hear  to  the  contrary, 
they  are  at  work  upon  it. 

The  question  must  arise,  alike  in  the  minds  of  the  resident  and 
the  stranger,  why  should  this  city,  with  no  wholesale  business  to 
speak  of;  until  recently,  very  little  private  wealth ;  no  manufac- 
tures ;  situated  in  the  midst  of  a  farming  country  which  is,  to  say 
the  least,  no  richer  or  more  populous  than  that  which  surrounds 
every  other  Kansas  town  twenty-five  years  old,  grow  as  this  city 
has  done  within  the  last  three  years,  until  there  is  little  doubt 
that  it  is  the  first  city  in  population  in  the  State?  Some  may  say 
that  it  is  the  location  here  of  the  seat  of  government  for  the  State, 
and  several  State  institutions,  but  that  fact  has  never  made  a 
flourishing  city  elsewhere.  As  a  rule,  it  would  be  hard  to  find  a 
duller  lot  of  towns  than  the  capitals  of  the  various  States  of  the 
Union.  The  sale  of  hash  to  a  Legislature  is  at  best  a  fleeting 
resource;  while  State  institutions,  as  a  rule,  purchase  their  sup- 
plies by  contract  at  commercial  centers,  and  do  little  for  the 
sleepy  burgs  in  which  they  are  located.  In  the  case  of  Topeka 
there  is  but  one  answer  to  the  problem  of  prosperity — the  estab- 
lishment here  of  the  headquarters  of  the  Atchison,  Topeka  & 
Santa  Fe  Railroad  Company. 

It  is  very  curious  to  look  back  as  I  can,  twelve  years,  and  note 
the  railroad  situation  here.  The  great  road  then  was  the  Kansas 
Pacific.  It  ran,  to  be  sure,  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  river,  but  it 
began  and  ended  somewhere,  and  was  the  only  thoroughfare  to 
the  East  and  the  West.  The  K.  P.  was  a  big  thing  then.  It 
did  nothing,  however,  for  the  town,  except  that  the  National  Land 
Company,  a  sort  of  wheel  within  a  wheel,  a  private  association 
which  sold  Kansas  Pacific  lands,  had  its  headquarters  here,  at- 
tracting a  good  many  land  buyers,  and  advertising  the  "far  West/' 
which  was  then  located  in  the  vicinity  of  Salina.  But  the  Na- 
tional Land  Company  went  up ;  I  do  not  know  what  became  of 


8  SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 

its  constituent  members.  One  of  them,  Dr.  Webb,  gave  the  world 
a  Kansas  book,  "Buffalo  Land,"  but  I  have  not  seen  either  author 
or  book  in  a  long  time.  In  those  days  when  the  "  K.  P."  was 
booming,  the  Santa  Fe  was  a  miserable  little  road,  beginning,  as 
I  knew  it  first,  at  Topeka,  and  ending  at  Burlingame,  a  town 
which  was  encouraged  by  its  railroad  prospects  to  issue  bonds  for 
a  woolen  mill,  which  has  never  yet  robbed  a  flock  of  its  fleece. 
There  was  one  little  old  engine,  and  the  "  machine  shop"  con- 
sisted mostly  of  an  anvil.  The  depot,  however,  was  quite  as 
commodious  as  that  of  the  Kansas  Pacific,  which  really  had  use 
for  one,  which  was  doubtful  in  the  case  of  the  Santa  Fe.  The 
financial  management  of  the  road  required  little  attention.  The 
road  finally  reached  the  Osage  county  coal  fields,  and  I  have 
heard  Mr.  Sargent,  then  general  freight  agent,  say  that  in  the 
early  days,  by  stepping  to  the  door  of  his  residence  and  counting 
the  cars  brought  in  by  the  solitary  daily  coal  train,  he  could  tell 
the  exact  receipts  of  the  corporation.  This  was  the  situation  in 
1870. 

Yesterday  I  visited,  for  the  first  time,  the  Santa  Fe  shops, 
located  here.  I  found  the  old  bridge  shops,  originally  built  by 
the  extinct  King  Bridge  Company,  a  humbug  that  made  a  living 
for  awhile  by  securing  municipal  bonds,  building  cheap  shops, 
and  then  moving  away,  or  neglecting  to  make  any  bridges,  had 
been  completely  transformed.  The  old  shops,  considered  exten- 
sive when  built,  served  only  as  a  sort  of  a  core  for  the  new  shops, 
which  stretched  away  on  all  sides.  I  walked  all  through  the 
shops.  They  were  crowded  with  men  and  machinery;  every  con- 
trivance by  which  wood  can  be  cut,  split,  sawed,  mortised  or 
carved;  or  iron  hammered,  cut,  welded,  bored,  filed,  or  punched, 
seemed  to  be  at  work.  Engines  are  brought  from  Colorado  and 
New  Mexico  for  repairs.  I  saw  the  famous  "Uncle  Dick"  on 
the  stocks.  This  enormous  locomotive  was  built  for  freight 
work  on  the  mountain  grades.  Her  boiler  looked  as  large  as 
that  of  an  old-fashioned,  high-pressure  Mississippi  river  steam- 
boat. When  first  sent  West,  "Uncle  Dick"  excited  great  curi- 
osity, but  fourteen  such  monster  engines  are  now  at  work  on  the 
road.  The  one  engine,  the  UC.  K.  Holliday,"  which  I  knew,  had 


IN    WHICH    WE   START.    .  9 

grown  to  hundreds.  I  saw  No.  315  in  the  round-house,  and  I 
was  glad  to  see  a  fine  new  engine,  the  first  built  in  the  shops  here, 
or  in  Kansas,  bearing  the  old  name,  "  C.  K.  Holliday,"  thus  pre- 
serving the  fame  of  the  gallant  Kansas  pioneer,  who,  with  some  of 
our  own  Atchison  citizens,  conceived  the  idea  of  this  great  road, 
and  having  "kept  the  faith,"  and,  we  are  happy  to  add,  his  stock, 
has  been  rewarded  after  many  days. 

The  great  fact,  however,  in  connection  with  this  road  is,  that 
every  morning  seven  hundred  men  take  their  places  in  the  shops 
or  in  the  yards.  Seven  hundred  men  is  a  strong  regiment  of  in- 
antry,  yet  that  is  the  force  employed  in  the  work  of  the  shops 
alone.  All  these  men  live  in  Topeka,  are  paid  their  money  and 
spend  it  in  Topeka.  All  that  portion  of  the  city  east  of  Kansas 
avenue,  known  in  the  old  time  as  "the  bottom,"  and  ten  years 
ago  covered  by  the  shanties  of  the  colored  people,  or  lying  in 
open,  weedy  commons,  is  now  covered  with  the  homes  of  these 
workmen.  Each  little  25-foot-front  lot  has  its  one-story  frame 
house,  with  more  ambitious  structures  here  and  there.  More  than 
this,  a  new  town,  called  Parkdale,  has  been  built  on  the  east  side 
of  the  Shunganunga,  inhabited,  I  should  judge,  almost  exclu- 
sively by  workingmeu.  Each  of  these  men  who  builds  a  house 
gives  a  pledge  that  he  will  become  a  permanent  resident,  and  as 
the  discipline  in  the  shops  at  least  is  very  strict,  his  permanency 
depends  on  his  being  a  steady  workman. 

Beside  the  shop  hands,  an  immense  number  of  track-men  and 
laborers  are  employed  in  the  acres  on  acres  of  tracks  and  yards, 
which  are  constantly  being  extended. 

I  was  shown  a  fine  passenger  coach  and  a  directors'  car  of  su- 
perior finish,  entirely  constructed  at  the  works  in  Topeka,  and 
this  gives  promise  of  a  time  when  all  the  cars  and  coaches  of  the 
road  shall  be  built  here,  giving  employment  to  hundreds  of  hands 
in  addition  to  those  now  employed. 

I  have  spoken  of  one  division  of  the  Santa  Fe  army  stationed 
at  Topeka,  but  there  is  another.  One  cannot  stop  at  a  Topeka 
hotel  without  noticing  the  large  number  of  young  men  at  the 
table.  These  are,  almost  to  a  man,  employes  of  the  road  —  clerks 
and  the  like.  Their  occupation  requires  a  certain  standard  of  in- 


10  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

telligence  and  appearance,  and  the  "grinding  monopoly"  business 
has  this  advantage,  that  it  tolerates  no  foolishness.  The  wild 
young  masher  finds  no  bowels  of  compassion  in  a  corporation, 
and  conducts  himself,  in  spiritualistic  language,  uin  harmony 
with  the  conditions." 

The  influence  of  a  great  corporation  like  this  in  a  town  like 
Topeka  is  of  course  very  great.  There  is  more  or  less  "  Santa 
Fe"  in  about  everything  here.  It  is  unavoidable,  and  I  do  not 
know  that  it  is  undesirable.  At  the  shops  is  a  whistle,  which 
must  be  a  near  relative  of  a  fog  horn.  Its  hoarse  blast  can  be 
heard  all  over  Topeka.  It  is  intended  to  call  the  workmen,  but 
when  it  blows,  all  Topeka  gets  up.  All  the  clocks  in  town  are 
set  by  that  whistle.  This  is  emblematic  of  the  part  that  the 
"Santa  Fe  "  plays  in  Topeka  affairs. 

I  have  watched  the  growth  of  Topeka  and  of  the  Santa  Fe  for 
a  good  many  years,  and  it  seems  to  be  a  good  example  of  sensi- 
ble reciprocity.  The  city  behaved  liberally  in  the  first  place, 
and  has  been  treated  well  in  return.  A  pay-roll  of  $100,000  a 
month  is  a  very  comfortable  thing  to  have  about  a  town.  The 
executive  officers  of  the  road  live  in  Topeka;  many  of  them 
have  lived  here  for  years,  and  have  established  permanent  and 
beautiful  homes  here,  and  it  is  but  just  to  say  that  they  have 
aided  every  worthy  public  enterprise,  and  have  heartily  co- 
operated with  the  older  citizens  in  the  building-up  of  the  city. 

I  have  mentioned  these  facts  with  a  good  deal  of  pleasure.  I 
think  every  Kansan  must  feel  gratification  in  the  thought  that 
the  Capital  of  his  State  is  not  a  dog-fennel  haunted  village,  and 
it  is  but  just  that  the  reason  of  the  Capital  city's  prosperity 
should  be  acknowledged.  For  my  part,  I  can  see  no  reason  why 
what  has  happened  in  Topeka  might  not  happen  elsewhere.  The 
spectacle  of  a  great  corporation  building  up  a  town  is  rather 
more  agreeable  than  that  of  a  corporation  constantly  making 
demands  of  a  community,  under  implied  threats,  and  in  return 
for  substantial  benefits  conferred  indulging  only  in  vague  and 
general  promises.  I  do  not  believe  any  corporation  or  individual 
ever  achieved  any  permanent  success  by  acting  the  hog,  while 
the  case  of  Topeka  shows  that  both  a  town  and  a  corporation 
may  become  great  gainers  by  a  liberal  and  generous  policy. 


A  DAY  WITH  THE  MENNONITES. 


THERE  has  always  been  something  very  interesting  to  me  in 
the  coming  of  different  peoples  to  Kansas,  and  the  blending  of  all 
of  them  into  a  community  of  interest  and  language.  In  my  news- 
paper travels  I  have  interviewed  a  half-dozen  varieties  of  "colo- 
nists," among  them  the  Hungarians,  of  Rawlins  county,  and  the 
colored  folks  of  Nicodemus,  who  came  to  Kansas  from  the  dis- 
tant and  foreign  shores  of  Kentucky. 

By  far  the  most  extensive  and  notable  emigration  in  the  history 
of  Kansas  was  that  of  the  so-called  "  Russians,"  which  began  sub- 
stantially in  1874,  and  which  has  resulted  in  the  settlement  of 
fifteen  thousand  Mennonites  in  the  counties  of  Marion,  Harvey, 
McPherson,  Butler,  Reno  and  Barton,  besides  the  Catholic  Ger- 
man-Russians, who  have  some  settlements  in  Ellis  county,  on  the 
line  of  the  Kansas  Pacific,  and  whose  mud  village  of  Herzog  I 
visited  in  1878. 

The  rallying  point  of  the  Russian  emigrants  in  1874  and  1875 
was  Topeka,  and  that  town  abounded  with  sheepskin  coats,  ample 
breeches,  bulbous  petticoats,  iron  teakettles,  and  other  objects 
supposed  to  be  distinctively  Russian,  for  many  months.  There 
was  considerable  competition  between  the  two  great  land-grant 
roads  —  the  Kansas  Pacific  and  the  Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa 
Fe —  to  secure  these  people  as  settlers.  With  its  usual  good 
luck,  the  Santa  Fe  captured  both  the  larger  and  the  better  class, 
the  Mennonites. 

The  Catholic  Russians  were  from  a  remote  part  of  Russia,  the 
government  of  Saratov,  and  were  the  most  foreign  in  their  appear- 
ance. The  men  and  boys  had  a  custom  of  gathering  on  the  street 
at  night,  near  their  quarters,  and  singing  in  concert.  The  music 
was  of  a  peculiarly  plaintive  character,  suggesting  the  wide,  lonely 
steppes  from  whence  they  came.  As  I  have  said,  they  went  out 
on  the  Kansas  Pacific,  where  they  seem  to  have  pretty  much  dis- 

(11) 


12  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

appeared  from  public  view.  In  1878,  at  Herzog,  they  had  made 
very  little  progress. 

The  Mennonites  seemed  more  at  home  in  this  country;  and 
securing  excellent  lands  from  the  Santa  Fe  company,  soon  disap- 
peared from  Topeka.  In  the  summer  of  1875,  in  company  with 
Mr.  C.  B.  Schmidt,  then,  as  now,  the  Emigration  Agent  of  the 
A.  T.  &  S.  F.,  who  had  been  largely  instrumental  in  settling 
them  in  Kansas,  I  visited  a  portion  of  the  colonists,  living  in  the 
villages  of  New  Alexanderwohl,  Hoffnungsthal  and  Gnadenau, 
in  Harvey  and  Marion  counties.  The  observations  made  on  the 
occasion  of  that  visit  were  embodied  in  an  article  in  the  Topeka 
Commonwealth,  entitled  "  The  Meunonites  at  Home."  From  that 
visit  until  yesterday,  I  had  never  seen  the  Mennonites,  though  I 
have  often  felt  a  great  curiosity  to  observe  for  myself  how  they 
had  succeeded. 

In  1875  the  Mennonites  were  still  a  strange  people.  They 
retained  the  little  green  flaring  wagons  they  had  brought  from 
Russia,  and  were  attempting  to  live  here  under  the  same  rule 
they  followed  in  Russia.  The  village  of  Gnadenau  was  the 
most  pretentious  of  their  villages.  It  was  a  long  row  of  houses, 
mostly  built  of  sod  and  thatched  with  long  prairie  grass.  A  few 
of  the  wealthier  citizens  had  built  frame  houses,  furnished  with 
the  brick  ovens  of  Russian  origin,  which  warm  the  family  and 
cook  its  food  for  all  day  with  two  armfuls  of  loose  straw. 

The  land  belonging  in  severalty  to  the  villagers,  lay  around 
the  settlement,  some  of  it  at  a  considerable  distance,  while  near  at 
hand  was  a  large  common  field,  or  rather  garden,  which  was 
principally  devoted  to  watermelons,  which  seemed  the  principal 
article  on  the  Mennonite  bill  of  fare. 

The  site  of  the  villages  seemed  selected  with  care,  each  stand- 
ing on  such  slight  ridges  and  elevations  as  the  prairie  afforded. 
It  was  summer  in  Kansas,  and  of  course  the  scene  was  naturally 
beautiful,  but  the  scattered  or  collected  Mennonite  houses,  with 
their  bare  walls  of  sods  or  boards,  amid  patches  of  broken  prairie, 
did  not  at  all  add  to  the  charm  of  the  scene,  The  people  were 
like  their  houses,  useful  but  ugly.  They  had  not  yet  got  over  the 
effect  of  their  long  ocean  voyage  or  their  life  in  the  huddled  emi- 


A    DAY    WITH    THE    MENNONITES. 


grant  quarters  at  Topeka,  where  they  acquired  a  reputation  for  un- 
cleanliness  which  they  were  far  from  deserving.  Still  there  was 
an  appearance  of  resolution  and  patience  about  them,  taken  with 
the  fact  that  all,  men,  women,  and  children,  were  at  work,  that 
argued  well  for  the  future.  It  was  easy,  if  possessed  of  the 
slightest  amount  of  imagination,  to  see  these  rude  habitations 
transformed  in  time  to  the  substantial  brick  houses,  surrounded 
by  orchards  such  as  the  people  had  owned  when  they  lived  on 
the  banks  of  the  Molotchna  in  far  Eussia.  Of  course,  it  wa& 
reasoned,  they  would  remain  villagers;  they  would  cling  to  the 
customs  they  brought  from  Russia,  and  remain  for  generations  a 
peculiar  people.  They  would  be  industrious;  they  would  acquire 
wealth;  but  they  would  remain  destitute  of  any  sense  of  beauty, 
rather  sordid,  unsocial,  and  to  that  extent  undesirable  settlers. 

Hardly  seven  years  have  passed,  and  on  Friday  last,  for  the 
first  time,  the  writer  was  enabled  to  carry  into  effect  a  long-cher- 
ished purpose  to  return  and  take  another  look  at  the  Mennonites. 
It  was  intended  to  start  from  Newton  in  the  morning,  but  a  day 
fair  as  ever  dawned  in  Eden  was  followed  by  a  night  of  thunder, 
lightning  and  rain,  the  rain  continuing  to  fall  all  the  following 
forenoon,  with  a  chill  wind  from  the  north ;  but  at  noon  one  of 
those  "transformation  scenes"  common  in  Kansas  occurred. 
The  sky  began  to  clear,  with  a  great  baud  of  blue  in  the  north 
and  west;  the  wind  blew  free,  and  by  2  o'clock  we  drove  out  over 
roads  that  you  could  almost  walk  in  barefooted  without  soiling 
your  feet.  We  were  fortunate  in  our  guide,  Mr.  Muntefering,  of 
Newton,  who  had  hunted  all  over  the  country,  and  had  traversed 
it  often  transacting  business  on  behalf  of  the  railroad  company 
with  the  Menuonites.  The  wheat  waved  a  varying  shade  of 
green,  shifting  in  its  lines  like  sea  water;  the  prairie  chickens 
rose  on  whirring  wing  before  the  old  hunting  dog,  who  ran  before 
the  carriage;  flocks  of  long-billed  plover  looked  out  of  the  grass; 
and  the  meadow  lark  rehearsed  a  few  notes  of  his  never-finished 
song. 

A  great  change  had  taken  place  in  the  country  generally  since 
my  last  visit.  The  then  raw  prairie  was  now,  barring  the  fences, 
very  like  Illinois.  At  last,  after  driving  about  ten  miles,  Mr.  Mun- 


14  SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 

tefering  announced  the  first  Mennonite  habitation,  in  what  seemed 
the  edge  of  a  young  forest,  and  I  then  learned  what  I  had  never 
before  heard,  or  else  had  forgotten,  that  the  Mennonites  had 
abandoned  the  village  system,  and  now  lived  "each  man  to  him- 
self." They  tried  the  villages  three  years,  but  some  confusion 
arose  in  regard  to  paying  taxes,  and  beside,  it  is  in  the  air,  this 
desire  for  absolute  personal  and  family  independence;  and  so 
they  went  on  their  lands,  keeping,  however,  as  close  together  as 
the  lay  of  the  country  would  admit.  Sometimes  there  are  four 
houses  to  the  quarter-section;  sometimes  four  to  the  section. 
The  grand  divisions  of  New  Alexanderwohl,  Hoffnungsthal  and 
Gnadenau  still  exist,  but  each  group  of  farms  has  a  name  of  its 
own,  revealing  a  poetical  tendency  somewhere,  as  Greenfield, 
Flower  Field,  Field  of  Grace,  Emma  Vale,  Vale  of  Hope,  and 
so  on.  These  are  the  German  names  freely  translated.  The  old 
sod  houses  (we  believe  the  Mennonites  never  resorted  to  the  dug- 
out) had  given  way  to  frame  houses,  sometimes  painted  white, 
with  wooden  window  shutters.  The  houses  had  no  porches  or 
other  architectural  adornments,  and  were  uniform  in  appearance. 
I  learned  afterward  that  the  houses  were  built  by  contract,  one 
builder  at  Halstead  erecting  sixty-five  houses  in  one  neighbor- 
hood. 

The  most  surprising  thing  about  these  places  is  the  growth  of 
the  trees.  I  left  bare  prairie;  I  returned  to  find  a  score  of  min- 
iature forests  in  sight  from  any  point  of  view.  The  wheat  and 
corn  fields  were  unfenced,  of  course,  but  several  acres  around 
every  house  were  set  in  hedges,  orchards,  lanes  and  alleys  of  trees 
— trees  in  lines,  trees  in  groups,  and  trees  all  alone.  In  many 
oases  the  houses  were  hardly  visible  from  the  road,  and  in  a  few 
years  will  be  entirely  hidden  in  the  cool  shade.  Where  the  houses 
were  only  a  few  hundred  yards  apart,  as  was  frequently  the  case, 
a  path  ran  from  one  to  the  other,  between  two  lines  of  poplars  or 
cottonwoods.  A  very  common  shrub  was  imported  from  Russia 
and  called  the  wild  olive,  the  flowers  being  very  fragrant ;  but 
the  all-prevailing  growth  was  the  mulberry,  another  Russian  idea, 
which  is  used  as  a  hedge,  a  fruit  tree,  for  fuel,  and  as  food  for  the 
silk  worm. 


A   DAY   WITH    THE   MENNONITES.  15 

We  wished  to  see  a  few  specimen  Mennonites  and  their  homes, 
and  called  first  on  Jacob  Schmidt,  who  showed  us  the  silk  worms 
feeding  in  his  best  room.  On  tables  and  platforms  a  layer  of 
mulberry  twigs  had  been  laid,  and  these  were  covered  with  thou- 
sands of  worms,  resembling  the  maple  worm.  As  fast  as  the  leaves 
are  eaten,  fresh  twigs  are  added.  As  the  worms  grow,  more  room 
is  provided  for  them,  and  they  finally  eat  mulberry  brush  by  the 
wagon-load.  Mr.  Schmidt  said  the  floor  of  his  garret  would  soon 
be  covered.  It  seemed  strange  that  the  gorgeous  robes  of  beauty 
should  begin  with  this  blind,  crawling  green  worm,  gnawing  rav- 
enously at  a  leaf. 

We  went  next  to  the  house  of  Peter  Schmidt.  Had  I  been  an 
artist  I  should  have  sketched  Peter  Schmidt,  of  Emmathal,  as 
the  typical  prosperous  Mennonite.  He  was  a  big  man,  on  the 
shady  side  of  forty.  His  face,  round  as  the  moon,  was  sunburned 
to  a  walnut  brown.  He  was  very  wide  fore  and  aft;  he  wore  a 
vest  that  buttoned  to  his  throat,  a  sort  of  brown  blouse,  and  a 
pair  of  very  roomy  and  very  short  breeches,  while  his  bare  feet 
were  thrust  into  a  sort  of  sandals  very  popular  with  the  Mennon- 
ites. The  notable  feature  of  Peter's  face  was  a  very  small  mouth, 
which  was  slightly  spread  at  times  with  a  little  smile,  showing 
his  white  teeth,  and  quite  out  of  proportion  to  his  immense  coun- 
tenance. Peter  knew  scarcely  any  English,  but  conversed  readily 
through  Mr.  Muntefering.  He  showed  with  pride  his  mulberry 
hedges.  The  plants  are  set  out  in  three  rows,  which  are  cut 
down  alternately.  Peter  had  already  cut  down  one  row,  and  had 
a  great  pile  of  brush  for  firewood.  The  Mennonites  relied  at  first 
on  straw,  and  a  mixture  of  straw  and  barnyard  manure,  which 
was  dried  and  used  for  fuel,  but  now  the  wood  is  increasing  on 
their  lands.  They  have  seldom  or  never  indulged  in  the  extrava- 
gance of  coal.  Another  source  of  pride  was  the  apricots.  The 
seed  was  brought  from  Russia,  and  the  trees  bore  plentifully  last 
year,  and  the  Mennonites,  taking  them  to  Newton  as  a  lunch, 
were  agreeably  surprised  by  an  offer  of  $3  a  bushel  for  them. 
Peter  Schmidt  showed  all  his  arboral  treasures  —  apples,  cherries, 
peaches,  apricots,  pears,  all  in  bearing,  where  seven  years  ago  the 
wind  in  passing  found  only  the  waving  prairie  grass.  No  won- 


16  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

der  Peter  Schmidt,  of  Emmathal,  waxed  fat  and  smiled.  He 
started  on  the  prairie  with  $800 ;  he  now  has  a  farm  worth  §4,000. 
We  went  into  the  house,  of  course;  the  door  of  every  Menuonite 
is  open,  and  the  proprietor  showed  us  his  silk  worms  and  his  pos- 
sessions generally.  He  exhibited  his  Russian  oven,  built  in  the 
partition  walls  so  as  to  warm  two  or  three  rooms,  and  to  which 
is  attached  also  a  sort  of  brick  range  for  cooking  purposes.  This 
device  cannot  be  explained  without  a  diagram.  It  is  perfectly 
efficient,  and  the  smoke  at  last  goes  into  a  wide  chimney  which 
is  used  as  the  family  smoke-house.  A  happy  man  was  Peter 
Schmidt,  and  well  satisfied  with  his  adopted  country,  for  when  I 
managed  to  mix  enough  German  and  English  together  to  ask 
him  how  he  liked  America  as  compared  with  Russia,  he  an- 
swered in  a  deep  voice,  and  with  his  little  smile:  "Besser."  With 
a  hearty  good-bye  to  Peter  Schmidt  of  Emmathal,  we  pursued 
our  journey,  passing  many  houses,  hedges  and  orchards,  and 
finally  came  to  the  home  of  Heinrich  Richert,  of  Blumenfeld,  or 
Flower  Field. 

This  place  was  of  the  more  modern  type.  The  house  was  a 
plain  frame,  of  the  American  pattern,  but  the  stable  had  a  roof 
of  thatch,  on  which  the  doves  clung  and  cooed,  as  you  see  them 
in  pictures.  Not  far  away  on  either  hand  were  two  other  houses, 
to  which  shaded  alleys  led.  In  one  of  them  lived  the  oldest 
married  daughter  of  the  family.  Leading  up  to  the  front  door 
the  path  was  lined  with  hedges  of  mulberry,  trimmed  very  low, 
and  flat  on  top,  as  box  hedges  are  trimmed;  and  there  was  also 
a  large  flower  bed  of  intricate  pattern,  the  property  of  the  Misses 
Richert 

When  Mr.  Richert  came  in  from  the  fields,  his  bright  eye,  his 
square  jaw,  and  the  way  he  stood  on  his  legs,  showed  that  he  was 
accustomed  to  authority.  He  had,  in  fact,  been  a  schoolmaster 
in  Russia,  and  in  America  occasionally  exercises  his  gifts  as  a 
preacher.  In  the  sitting-room,  which  had  no  carpet,  but  a  pine 
floor  which  fairly  shone,  was  a  book  case  set  in  the  wall  and  filled 
with  books,  which  usually  are  not  very  common  in  Mennonite 
houses.  They  were  all  sober-colored  volumes,  commentaries  on 
the  Scriptures,  and  works  on  horse  doctoring.  Madame  Richert, 


A    DAY    WITH   THE   MENNONITES.  17 

a  very  pleasant  woman,  with,  it  may  be  remarked,  a  very  pretty 
and  small  hand,  gave  the  history  of  the  older  books,  which  were 
brought  from  Prussia,  where  her  husband  was  born,  but  she  her- 
self was  born  in  Southern  Russia,  as  were  the  thirteen  young 
Richerts. 

It  was  decided  to  accept  the  hospitality  of  these  good  people, 
and  the  mother  and  daughters  got  supper  —  and  such  a  supper! 
such  bread  and  butter  and  preserves;  and  everything,  nearly,  on 
the  bill  of  fare  was  the  product  of  this  six-year-old  farm.  At 
table  the  conversation  turned  on  the  mode  of  living  in  Russia. 
From  Mr.  Richert's  description  the  Mennonites  lived  much  bet- 
ter than  most  working  people  in  Europe.  They  had  Brazilian 
coffee  which  came  by  way  of  Hamburg,  and  tea  which  came 
overland  from  China;  then  they  had  fish,  both  fresh-water  fish 
and  fish  from  the  Sea  of  Azof.  He  said  the  mode  of  serving 
food  had  been  changed  somewhat  since  the  Meunouites  had  mi- 
grated to  this  country. 

After  supper,  Mr.  Richert,  his  sou,  and  the  visitors,  had  a  long 
talk  about  Russia.  The  treatment  accorded  the  Mennonites  by 
the  Russian  government,  up  to  1871,  was  all  that  could  be  de- 
sired. The  agreements  made  in  the  days  of  the  Empress  Cath- 
erine, what  Mr.  Richert  called  the  "privilegiurn,"  were  faith- 
fully kept.  The  Mennonites  did  not  own  the  lands,  but  leased 
them  on  the  condition  of  cultivating  them;  the  improvements 
were  their  own.  The  Menuonites  had,  in  fact,  very  little  to  do 
with  the  Imperial  government;  each  of  the  fifty  villages  had  its 
burgomaster,  and  a  chief  burgomaster  was  elected  by  the  people. 
The  Government  transacted  its  business  with  the  Mennonites 
through  a  council  consisting  of  three  Russian  officials,  and  these 
performed  their  duty  honestly — a  rare  thing  in  Russia.  The 
Mennonites  were  industrious,  peaceable  and  loyal;  a  Mennonite 
was  the  richest  man  in  the  Crimea,  and  one  of  the  wealthiest  in 
Russia.  Everything  went  well  until  the  Government,  in  1871, 
announced  its  intention  of  enforcing  a  universal  conscription. 
Against  this  the  Mennonites  protested.  Ten  years  was  given 
them  to  yield  or  leave.  Thousands  left.  In  1881  the  Govern- 
ment revoked  the  "privilegiurn,"  compelled  the  remaining  Men- 


18  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

nonites  to  take  lands  in  severalty,  and  began  to  introduce  the 
Russian  language  into  the  Mennonite  schools.  Russia's  loss  is 
our  gain. 

At  breakfast  the  conversation  turned  on  the  wonderful  success 
of  the  Mennonites  with  all  kinds  of  trees,  quite  excelling  any- 
thing known  by  Americans,  with  all  their  low-spirited  horticul- 
tural societies.  Herr  Richert  remarked  that  one  thing  that 
helped  the  trees  was  "  plowing  the  dew  under."  This  is  one  of 
the  secrets  of  Mennonite  success  —  they  "plow  the  dew  under" 
in  the  morning,  and  do  not  stop  plowing  till  the  dew  falls  at  even- 
ing. 

The  history  of  Herr  Richert  was  that  of  all  the  Mennonites 
we  talked  with.  He  had  come  to  this  country  with  $1,000 ;  at 
the  end  of  the  second  year  he  was  $1,300  in  debt,  but  had  lifted 
the  load  and  was  now  the  possessor  of  a  fine  farm.  The  Men- 
nonites, we  may  say,  bought  their  lands  in  alternate  sections  of 
the  railroad  company,  and  in  most  cases  bought  the  intervening 
sections  of  individual  owners.  They  have  been  prompt  pay. 
Many  of  the  Mennonites  were  very  poor.  To  provide  these  with 
land,  a  large  sum  was  borrowed  from  wealthy  Mennonites  in  the 
East.  The  beneficiaries  are  now  prosperous,  and  the  money  has 
been  faithfully  repaid.  Besides  this,  a  mission  has  been  main- 
tained in  the  Indian  Territory,  and  a  considerable  sum  has  been 
recently  forwarded  to  aid  destitute  brethren  in  Russia. 

To  continue  our  journey:  our  next  stop  was  to  call  on  a  settler 
who  wore  a  beard,  a  Cossack  cap,  and  looked  the  Russian  more 
than  any  other  man  we  met.  He  took  us  into  a  room  to  show 
us  some  Tartar  lamb-skin  coats,  which  was  a  perfect  copy  of  a 
room  in  Russia;  with  its  sanded  floor,  its  wooden  settees  painted 
red  and  green,  its  huge  carved  chest  studded  with  great  brass- 
headed  bolts,  and  its  brass  lock-plate,  all  scoured  to  perfect 
brightness.  In  a  little  cupboard  was  a  shining  store  of  brass 
and  silver  table  ware.  It  was  like  a  visit  to  Molotchna. 

At  the  humble  dwelling  of  Johann  Krause  we  witnessed  the 
process  of  reeling  raw  silk.  The  work  was  done  by  Mrs.  Krause, 
on  a  rude  twister  and  reel  of  home  construction.  The  cocoons 
were  placed  in  a  trough  of  boiling  water,  and  the  woman,  with 


A   DAY   WITH   THE   MENNONITES.  1& 

great  dexterity,  caught  up  the  threads  of  light  cocoons,  twisting 
them  into  two  threads  and  running  these  on  the  reel.  The  work 
required  infinite  patience,  of  which  few  Americans  are  possessed. 
The  Mennonites  carried  on  the  silk-raising  business  in  Russia 
with  great  success,  and  bid  fair  to  make  it  a  great  interest  here. 

After  leaving  Johann  Krause,  we  made  few  more  halts,  but 
drove  for  miles  with  .many  Mennonite  houses  in  sight,  and  the 
most  promising  orchards  and  immense  fields  of  the  greenest 
wheat.  I  have  never  seen  elsewhere  such  a  picture  of  agricul- 
tural prosperity. 

If  anyone  has  not  yet  made  up  his  mind  as  to  the  possibilities 
of  Kansas  agriculture,  I  recommend  a  visit  to  the  Mennonite  set- 
tlements. It  is  not  difficult  of  accomplishment,  as  the  points  I 
visited  in  Harvey,  McPherson  and  Marion  counties  can  be  reached 
by  a  few  miles  drive  from  Newton  or  Halstead,  on  the  main  line 
of  the  Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa  Fe,  or  from  Canton,  Hillsboro 
and  other  stations  on  the  Marion  &  McPherson  branch. 

It  is  a  matter,  I  regret  to  say,  of  uncertainty  whether  the  work 
begun  by  these  Mennonite  settlers  will  be  completed.  If  the  sons 
and  grandsons  of  Peter  Schmidt  of  Emmathal  and  Heinrich 
Richert  of  Blumenfeld  will  walk  in  the  ways  of  these  worthy 
men,  the  result  will  be  something  like  fairy-land  —  the  fairies 
being,  however,  substantial  men,  weighing  about  185  pounds  each. 
The  orchards  will  bud  and  bloom,  and  amid  them  will  stand  the 
solid  brick  houses,  like  those  of  Russia,  and  the  richest  farmers 
of  Kansas  will  dwell  therein.  But  there  is  a  danger  that  this 
will  not  come  to  pass.  Jacob  and  David  will  go  to  work  on  the 
railroad,  and  let  the  plow  take  care  of  itself;  and  Susanna  and 
Aganetha  will  go  out  to  service  in  the  towns,  and  fall  to  wearing 
fine  clothes  and  marrying  American  Gentiles ;  and  the  evil  day 
may  come  when  the  descendant  of  the  Mennonites  of  the  old 
stock  will  be  cushioning  store-boxes,  saving  the  Nation  with  his 
mouth,  or  even  going  about  like  a  roaring  lion  seeking  a  nomi- 
nation for  Congress.  I  wish  I  could  believe  it  otherwise.  I  wish 
our  atmosphere  did  not  make  us  all  so  smart  that  we  cannot  en- 
joy good  health.  Were  it  not  for  that  accursed  vanity  and  rest- 
lessness which  is  our  heritage,  I  could  indulge  in  a  vision  of  the 


20  SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 

future — of  a  peaceful,  quiet,  wealthy  people,  undisturbed  by  the 
throes  of  speculation  or  politics,  dwelling  in  great  content  under 
the  vines  and  mulberry  trees  which  their  fathers  planted  in  the 
grassy,  wind-swept  wilderness. 


ODDS  AND  ENDS  OF  KANSAS. 


A  GENTLEMAN  who  had  traveled  in  Egypt  once  told  me  that, 
so  rank  is  the  vegetation  in  that  country,  a  picketed  camel  graz- 
ing in  a  circle  cannot  keep  up  with  the  growth  of  the  grass ;  that 
is  to  say,  when  he  returns  to  the  point  in  the  circle  where  he 
began,  he  finds  the  grass  higher  than  he  found  it  at  first.  I  find 
that  something  of  the  kind  occurs  in  this  country.  The  traveler 
or  correspondent  who  fails  to  visit  a  portion  of  Kansas  for  two 
or  three  years  discovers  that  the  country  has  outgrown  him.  In 
the  four  years  that  have  elapsed  since  I  visited  the  southwest, 
although  I  have  read  the  local  papers  every  day  since,  I  have 
not  kept  in  my  mind  a  clear  conception  of  the  march  of  progress. 
For  instance,  there  is  a  new  system  of  railroads  and  a  whole 
batch  of  new  railroad  towns.  Beginning  at  Emporia,  there  was 
no  "Howard  Branch;"  only  an  unfinished  road  which  was  ex- 
pected to  end  at  Eureka;  no  Marion  &  McPhersou  Branch  turned 
off  at  Florence;  the  Wichita  Branch  ended  at  that  place,  and 
Winfield  and  Arkansas  City  were  railroad  towns  only  in  expect- 
ancy. Caldwell,  now  one  of  the  famous  towns  in  the  State,  I 
knew  as  a  remote  hamlet,  its  recollection  preserved  only  by  a 
story  that  an  unfortunate  stranger  wearing  a  silk  hat,  venturing 
into  its  precincts,  had  been  murdered  by  a  ruffian  who,  saying 
he  would  knock  the  hat  off,  shot  the  poor  fellow  through  the 
head. 

At  Wichita  I  found  everybody  talking  of  the  "Frisco"  road 
as  if  it  had  always  been  in  existence,  yet  my  last  recollection  of 
it  was  as  a  bob-tailed  affair,  as  far  as  Kansas  was  concerned, 
running  from  Oswego  to  Columbus,  and  so  east.  Now,  passen- 
gers from  St.  Louis  pass  through  Fredonia,  Neodesha,  and  so  on, 
to  Wichita ;  then  up  the  Santa  Fe  Branch  to  Sedgwick  City ; 
then  by  a  recently  constructed  cut-off  to  Halstead,  and  then 
by  the  Atchison  main  line  to  the  Pacific. 
2  (21) 


22  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

The  Atchison  road  itself,  of  which  the  roads  mentioned  are  all 
branches  or  connections,  has  in  these  four  years  entered  the  field 
as  an  actual  Pacific  railroad,  competing  for  the  trans-continental 
business,  and  has  been  "armed  and  equipped,"  running  enormous 
passenger  trains;  and  in  the  Marion  &  McPherson  Branch  pos- 
sessing what  amounts  to  a  double  track  for  a  long  distance.  A 
complete  line  of  fine  eating  stations  has  been  put  in  operation, 
the  Superintendent  of  Kitchens  being  Mr.  Phillips,  formerly  of 
the  Sherman  House,  Chicago,  where  his  salary  was  $2,500  a  year. 
Beginning  at  Atchison,  the  eating  stations  are  Topeka,  Florence, 
Coolidge,  La  Junta,  Raton,  Las  Vegas,  Wallace,  Hot  Springs, 
Deming  and  Larny.  To  these  will  be  added,  in  a  day  or  two,  New- 
ton, with  a  fine  railroad  hotel.  This  will  divide  the  business  with 
Florence,  now  the  most  important  of  the  stations,  as  two  branches, 
the  Marion  &  McPherson  and  the  old  Eldorado  Branch,  there 
connect  with  the  main  line.  We  were  accustomed  to  speak, 
years  ago,  of  Kansas  as  "gridironed  with  railroads,"  but  a  mul- 
tiplicity of  new  bars  have  been  added  within  the  last  two  years, 
not  to  speak  of  four. 

The  most  unchangeable-looking  country  so  far  familiar  to  me 
on  what  may  be  termed  the  old  Santa  Fe,  is  that  between  Topeka 
and  Emporia.  The  scenery  consists,  as  aforetime,  of  coal  shafts 
and  wood-built  mining  towns,  and  side-tracks  full  of  coal  cars; 
and  yet  Kansas  cannot  be  made  to  look  anywhere  like  a  genuine 
mining  country.  There  are  no  sooty  hills,  and  the  sky  is  too  vast 
for  pollution  by  smoke.  Kansas  will  never  look  like  Pennsyl- 
vania, nor  ever  possess  a  Pittsburg.  It  is  one  of  her  many  good 
points  to  be  the  tenth  coal-producing  State  of  the  Union,  without 
being  begrimed.  In  the  Osage  coal  country,  pick  and  plow  do 
not  seem  to  work  well  together,  but  great  herds  of  cattle  are  graz- 
ing a  few  feet  above  the  coal  beds;  and  I  saw  in  Cherokee  county 
once  a  fine  wheat  field,  white  for  the  harvest,  and  the  miners  were 
digging  the  coal  from  under  it. 

Passing  Emporia,  the  gradual  agricultural  transformation  of 
the  Cottonwood  valley  is  seen;  but  the  first  remarkable  change 
in  the  surface  of  the  earth  is  at  what  was  once  called  Cottonwood 
Falls  station,  now  Strong  City.  The  quarries  here,  from  whence 


ODDS    AND   ENDS   OF   KANSAS.  23 

came  the  stone  for  the  great  bridge  at  Atchison,  have  been  devel- 
oped enormously,  and  a  smart  little  town  has  grown  up  around 
them.  Coal,  cattle,  wheat  and  stone  form  a  striking  combination 
of  products  along  one  line  of  railroad. 

At  Newton,  as  one  sees  it  now,  it  is  hard  for  a  stranger  to  be- 
lieve that  a  place  named  in  honor  of  a  staid  and  godly  Massa- 
chusetts village  presented,  for  the  first  season  of  its  existence, 
the  "  fittest  earthly  type  of  hell."  I  saw  it  once  during  that  sum- 
mer, sweltering  in  its  sinful  ugliness  in  the  noonday  sun,  a  fes- 
tering ulcer  on  the  face  of  earth.  One  street  —  the  present  Main 
street — was  lined  with  an  irregular  array  of  hastily-constructed 
shanties  —  gambling-rooms,  drink-mills  and  the  like  —  while,  as 
if  scorned  even  by  these  places,  in  a  suburb  stood  the  dance 
houses,  long,  low,  unpainted,  and  excelled  in  hideousness  only  by 
the  wretched,  bloated,  painted,  blear-eyed  women  who  dwelt  there, 
and  the  bow-legged,  low-browed,  Indian-like  cow  boys  who  con- 
sorted with  them.  These  creatures  finally  seemed  to  grow  wild, 
and  went  to  killing  each  other.  According  to  tradition,  eight 
corpses  were  the  result  of  one  night's  fusillade.  These  events 
had  at  that  time  a  graphic  local  historian.  He  combined  the 
functions  of  a  man  of  letters  and  a  musician  in  a  dance  house. 
It  was  literally  a  case  of  "all  that  he  saw,  and  part  of  which  he 
was."  What  fate  induced  or  seduced  a  man  of  his  intelligence 
to  herd  with  the  scum  of  the  earth,  and  form  part  of  it,  I  never 
knew ;  nor  do  I  know  what  finally  became  of  the  writer  who  se- 
lected for  himself,  amid  such  surroundings,  the  pretty  nom  deplume 
of  "Allegro."  Newton's  wild  infancy  was  not  only  described 
in  prose,  but  our  own  Theodore  F.  Price  wrote  some  wonderful, 
weird  verses  on  the  subject — a  narrative  poem  called  "Newton,  a 
Tale  of  the  Southwest."  By  the  way,  the  Champion,  which  keeps 
the  record  of  all  the  Kansas  bards,  and  has  often  mentioned  Theo- 
dore, can  add  another  paragraph  to  his  story.  The  "minstrel 
boy"  has  gone,  not  to  the  war,  but  to  far  Vancouver.  It  seems 
to  be  a  cold  day  for  poetry  in  Kansas. 

The  case  of  Newton  and  a  dozen  other  towns  in  Kansas  illus- 
trates the  final  triumph  of  goodness,  or  at  least  respectability. 
Newton  is  now  a  fine,  growing  town,  with  the  usual  Kansas  com- 


24  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

plemerit  of  newspapers,  school  houses,  churches,  brick  blocks, 
and  banks  enough  to  hold  all  the  money  of  all  the  editors  in 
Kansas,  beside  a  really  luxurious  and  aesthetic  jail.  White  cot- 
tages and  gardens  now  cover  and  obliterate  the  old,  hard,  sun- 
baked cattle  trail.  And  so  it  is  that  while  nobody  ever  heard  of 
a  decent  town  becoming  a  nest  of  land  pirates,  gamblers  and 
ruffians,  with  the  poor  women  who  live  with  such,  Newton,  Abi- 
lene and  many  more  have  risen  above  such  beginnings.  A  very 
old  book,  which  possibly  I  do  not  quote  with  accuracy,  says  that 
the  name  or  memory  of  the  wicked  shall  rot;  and  it  is  even  so. 
The  evil  is  transient ;  it  is  hunted  and  fleeting.  Go  to  Abilene 
or  Newton  now,  and  you  may  have  pointed  out  to  you,  half  hid- 
den by  other  buildings,  a  battered,  wretched  wreck  of  a  house, 
the  old  "Alamo,"  or  "Gold  Room,"  or  some  place  worse,  its  rec- 
ollection kept  alive  by  some  dark  and  evil  deed ;  but  even  these 
wretched  monuments  of  shame  soon  disappear.  Even  the  graves 
of  those  who  died  in  the  fierce  brawls  of  the  old  time  are  lost. 
Their  dust  does  not  repose  in  the  "God's  acre"  of  the  modern 
town.  It  has  been  often  noted  that  the  dangerous  classes  in  large 
cities  huddle  together  in  dark  places,  in  narrow  streets  and  lanes 
and  courts,  but  in  time  a  great  street  or  boulevard  is  driven 
through  the  doleful  place;  the  sunlight  is  let  in,  and  the  misera- 
ble flit  otherwhere.  And  so  it  is,  even  in  Kansas.  As  the  view- 
less air  and  the  turbid  river  purify  themselves,  so  does  the  moral 
atmosphere. 

At  Wichita,  on  Sunday,  I  saw  more  corroboration  of  the  theory 
here  advocated.  Wichita  had  its  turbulent  period,  but  it  seems 
to  me  that  the  town  grows  wider  and  roomier,  and  prettier  and 
finer,  every  time  I  revisit  it.  A  photograph  taken  a  few  years 
ago  hangs  in  a  gallery  showcase.  In  the  picture  every  house  on 
the  town  site  stands  up  in  bare  distinction,  "  all  by  itself."  To- 
day, at  the  distance  of  a  mile  from  town,  hardly  anything  can  be 
seen  save  a  few  high  roofs,  and  the  church  spires  above  the  bil- 
lowy green.  There  is  one  street,  Lawrence  avenue  I  believe 
they  call  it,  which  seemed  to  me  as  fine  in  its  way  as  Euclid  ave- 
nue in  Cleveland.  Going  to  the  Methodist  church,  I  found  that 
new  sanctuary  a  trifle  too  gorgeous,  if  there  was  any  fault.  I 


ODDS    AND    ENDS   OF   KANSAS.  25 

doubt  if  Bishop  Asbury  would  have  liked  it.  He  might  have 
thought  the  I.  H.  S.  in  the  stained  glass  windows  a  "relic  of 
Popery."  But  Bishop  Asbury  has  been  dead  a  long  time,  and 
ecclesiastical  ornamentation  is  better  than  "Rowdy  Joe"  and 
"Red,"  subjects  once  more  prominent  in  Wichita  life  and  con- 
versation than  church  architecture.  And,  besides,  the  preacher 
in  his  prayer  gave  thanks  for  the  creditable  manner  in  which  the 
pupils  of  the  public  schools  had  acquitted  themselves  at  the  "  ex- 
hibition," which  seemed  a  sensible  idea,  and  smacking  of  Kan- 
sas withal. 

Notice  has  often  been  made  of  the  interest  taken  in  Kansas  by 
men  and  peoples  of  every  variety.  At  Wichita  I  learned  that  the 
slant-eyed  and  much-whooped-about  Mongolian  had  joined  the 
polyglot  crowd  who  are  engaged  in  the  making  of  Kansas.  The 
books  of  the  register  of  deeds  for  the  county  of  Sedgwick  show 
that  two  eminent  Celestials,  Chin  Lan  Pin  and  Yung  Wing,  have 
thousands  of  dollars  loaned  on  real  estate  in  the  county,  and  that 
they  stand  to  quite  a  number  of  American  citizens  in  the  inter- 
esting relation  sustained  by  a  mortgagee.  The  "Chinee"  may 
be  a  heathen,  but  his  head  is  spherical  when  it  comes  to  putting 
his  money  where  it  will  do  the  most  good. 


A  LETTER  ON  AGRICULTURE. 


THE  writer  of  this  has  long  been  of  the  opinion  that  the  extent 
and  variety  of  his  ignorance  on  the  subject  of  farming  well-nigh 
qualify  him  for  the  editorship  of  an  agricultural  journal,  but 
has  so  far  resisted  the  temptation  which  his  misinformation  pre- 
sented, to  write  on  the  tillage  of  the  soil,  except  so  far  as  his 
position  as  a  Kansas  journalist  has  obliged  him  to  take  part  in 
the  everlasting  "rain-belt"  controversy,  without  which  no  Kan- 
sas newspaper  file  is  complete.  But  the  hour  has  come,  and  your 
correspondent  proposes  to  enter  the  lists  as  writer  on  the  first  of 
human  occupations,  promising,  meanwhile,  to  allay  the  possible 
fears  of  the  readers  of  the  Champion,  that  this  is  his  last  appear- 
ance in  that  capacity. 

In  a  former  letter,  the  agricultural  and  horticultural  experi- 
ence of  the  Mennonites  in  Marion,  McPherson  and  Harvey 
counties  has  been  mentioned.  It  did  not  require  an  acquaintance 
with  the  reports  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Kansas  State  Board  of 
Agriculture  for  the  past  ten  years,  more  or  less,  to  know  that 
the  Mennonites  had  absolutely  succeeded.  Nearly  everything  in 
Kansas  is  going  to  succeed  sometime.  It  is  next  spring  that 
property  is  going  to  be  higher.  "Ad  astro,  per  aspera  —  after 
awhile,"  should  be  the  motto  of  our  State.  The  Mennouites, 
however,  have  already  "made  it."  Having  been  an  agricultural 
writer  but  a  few  minutes,  I  do  not  know  what  the  best  and  most 
learned  authorities  consider  a  successful  farmer  in  this  western 
country,  but  I  should  call  that  farmer  a  success  who  gets  out  of 
his  land  a  comfortable  shelter,  plenty  to  eat,  respectable  clothing 
for  all  hands,  pleasant  surroundings,  as  far  as  trees  and  flowers 
can  make  such,  means  to  give  his  children  a  sensible  education, 
and  a  surplus  of  money  sufficient  to  buy  books  and  newspapers 
enough  to  prevent  his  household  from  relapsing  into  ignorance; 
and  who,  above  all,  is  out  of  debt.  I  do  not  look  upon  farming 

(26) 


A    LETTER   ON   AGRICULTURE.  27 

as  primarily  a  money-making  business,  farther  than  I  have  indi- 
cated. In  this  view  of  the  case,  the  Mennonites  have  succeeded. 
They  have  in  possession  nearly  all  I  have  indicated,  and  could 
have  the  rest  if  they  wished.  They  live  in  a  good  country,  but 
no  better  than  is  to  be  found  all  over  the  eastern  half  of  Kansas. 
They  have  encountered  the  same  seasons,  the  same  grasshoppers, 
the  same  drouths,  the  same  hot  winds,  that  other  settlers  have 
contended  with,  and  yet  they  have  remained  on  their  farms  while 
thousands  of  gifted  Americans  have  fled  precipitately  to  the 
East,  carrying  a  tale  of  disaster  as  they  went.  While  many  a 
settler  longer  in  the  country  lives  in  a  bare,  bleak,  wind-shaken 
and  sun-blistered  shanty,  with  a  few  desolate,  unfenced,  dying 
peach  trees  adding  horrors  to  the  scene,  the  Mennonite  dwells  in 
the  shadow  of  his  mulberries  and  apricots,  and  grows  fatter  every 
day. 

It  is  true  that  some  of  the  Mennonites  brought  considerable 
money  with  them  from  Russia,  but  others  brought  nothing.  It 
seems  plain  enough,  all  things  considered,  that  the  difference  be- 
tween failure  and  success  in  Kansas,  taking  counties  like  Harvey, 
McPherson  and  Marion  as  examples  —  and  there  are  plenty  of 
others  as  good  —  lies  in  the  men  and  women,  and  not  in  the  soil 
or  climate.  The  patient,  toiling  Mennonite  is  doubtless  consid- 
ered dull  by  some  of  his  American  neighbors,  but  he  praises 
Kansas,  and  says  she  is  the  best  country  yet,  and  stays  with  her. 

My  next  "skip"  in  the  collection  of  this,  my  first  agricultural 
report,  was  to  Lamed.  That  town,  I  believe,  lies  in  the  western 
or  third  belt.  Possibly  I  am  mistaken,  but  if  so  the  meteoro- 
logical and  agricultural  savants  can  correct  me.  I  went  to  see 
about  sorghum.  The  Champion  has  always  been  an  advocate  of 
Kansas  syrup,  and  its  belief  in  Kansas  sugar  has  rivaled  that  of 
the  late  LeDuc  himself.  It  may  be  said  that  the  "sorghum  lap- 
per"  has  never  had  a  more  faithful  friend  than  the  Champion ; 
and  so,  knowing  that  Mr.  John  Bennyworth,  the  pioneer  sugar 
manufacturer  of  Kansas,  had  invested  a  good  deal  of  money  in 
the  neighborhood,  a  stop  at  Larned  was  deemed  advisable.  In 
company  with  Col.  Ballinger,  of  the  Chronoscope,  the  sugar  fac- 
tory was  visited.  A  closed  building  was  found,  filled  with  silent 


28  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

and  costly  machinery  and  a  strong  smell  of  sorghum  —  nothing 
more.  Disaster  appeared  to  have  attended  the  enterprise  from 
the  start.  At  first  the  water  supply  was  deficient;  then  the  ma- 
chinery broke,  and  could  not  be  repaired  this  side  of  Cincinnati ; 
then  the  cane,  from  frost  or  some  other  cause,  soured,  and  would 
not  make  sugar.  Mr.  Benny  worth  demonstrated  that  sugar  could 
be  made;  but  the  factory  is  now  closed,  and  no  one  appeared  to 
know  when,  if  ever,  it  would  be  reopened.  This  looked  like  the 
failure  of  a  Kansas  enterprise,  something  that  it  is  gall  and  worm- 
wood for  a  Kansas  man  to  acknowledge.  But  Ballinger's  flag 
was  still  there.  He  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  Mr.  Benny- 
worth  was  still  an  extensive  planter  of  sorghum  cane,  and  de- 
clared that  the  cane  itself  was  worth  more  than  all  the  sugar  that 
ever  had  been  or  ever  would  be  made.  He  declared  that  it  was 
the  great  modern  discovery  in  the  way  of  feed  for  cattle,  sheep, 
and  even  hogs;  that  a  ton  of  it  —  worth  $2  —  was  worth  an  in- 
definite amount  of  prairie  hay ;  and  generally,  that  the  path  of 
prosperity  for  Pawnee  county  lay  through  a  sorghum  patch  — 
that  and  broom  corn,  of  which  $100,000  worth  was  sold  in  Paw- 
nee county  last  season.  Cattle,  sheep,  sorghum  cane  and  broom 
corn  was  Dr.  Ballinger's  prescription  for  Pawnee  county.  As  to 
corn,  he  thought  enough  should  be  planted  for  the  family  roast- 
ing ears,  and  wheat  enough  to  go  to  mill  and  keep  up  appear- 
ances. There  was  no  end  to  the  cattle  and  sheep  business.  There 
were  300,000  sheep  between  Speareville  and  Lamed,  in  the  coun- 
try tributary  to  the  Santa  Fe  road,  and  it  was  just  as  easy  to  have 
1,000,000.  Rice  corn,  he  said,  was  a  delusion  and  a  snare. 

At  the  State  Fair  at  Topeka  last  fall,  enormous  onions  and 
other  vegetables  were  exhibited  by  the  A.  T.  &  S.  F.  people  as 
raised  by  irrigation  at  Garden  City,  Sequoyah  county.  As  the 
place  was  approached,  the  stories  of  the  success  of  the  enterprise 
varied.  Most  were  to  the  effect  that  a  few  onions  were  about  all 
the  landscape  afforded,  and  a  determination  once  formed  to  visit 
the  place  was  abandoned.  But  at  five  o'clock  this  morning,  as 
the  brakeman  called  "Garden  City,"  this  determination  was  re- 
voked, and  a  very  pleasant  and  instructive  day  has  been  passed 
in  consequence. 


A    LETTER   ON   AGRICULTURE.  29 

The  country  around  Garden  City  is  very  large.  The  world 
never  looked  larger  than  from  the  depot  platform  this  morning, 
A  vast  plain,  as  flat  as  a  floor,  stretched  away  to  the  east,  the 
west,  the  north.  On  the  south  flowed  the  bankless,  treeless  Ar- 
kansas, reminding  one  of  a  human  eye  without  lashes;  beyond 
the  river  was  the  line  of  yellow  sand-hills.  It  was  very  still 
when  the  train  with  its  rush  and  roar  had  come  and  gone.  A 
camp  fire  glowed  off  toward  the  river,  and  a  group  of  white-cov- 
ered wagons  stood  near.  The  sun  rose  suddenly,  as  if  it  came 
up  over  the  edge  of  the  world  at  the  horizon.  The  little 
town  of  Garden  City,  the  usual  scattered  collection  of  frame 
houses,  sod  stables,  farm  wagons,  and  agricultural  implements 
which  develop  a  new  settlement  in  Kansas,  had  not  yet  got  up  to 
breakfast.  Four  men,  with  carpet-bags,  came  out  of  the  east 
somewhere  and  walked  literally  up  the  track  to  the  westward. 
They  were  going  up  thousands  of  feet  more  into  the  fastnesses  of 
the  Kocky  Mountains.  The  place  is  one  of  the  steps  of  the 
mountains;  this  seeming  plain  is  really  a  slope  of  3,000  feet  above 
the  level  of  the  sea.  The  only  genuine  mountain  I  ever  climbed 
was  hardly  as  high.  •  Never  have  I  been  so  impressed  with  the 
vastness  of  this  western  land.  It  was  almost  oppressive. 

A  few  hours  later,  I  set  about  looking  at  the  results  of  the  first 
irrigation  experiment  in  Kansas.  I  had  heard  that  my  old  ac- 
quaintance, C.  J.  Jones,  had  dug  a  ditch  and  raised  a  garden, 
and  that  was  about  all.  I  am  frank  enough  to  say  that  I  have 
always  heartily  despised  the  name  of  irrigation  and  the  country 
that  resorted  to  it.  Still,  everything  should  be  heard  in  its  de- 
fense. 

In  company  with  Mr.  I.  R.  Holmes,  I  rode  over  the  lands 
where  the  first  ditch  was  opened,  and  the  ground  broken.  It 
looked  like  what  it  is  —  a  great  newly-made  garden.  It  was  laid 
out  in  beds  of  large  size,  each  with  a  foot-high  ridge  around  it, 
like  the  bottom  crust  of  a  pie.  These  are  the  dykes  through 
which  the  water  is  let  on  the  beds.  Running  the  length  of  the 
fields  parallel  with  the  river  was  a  ditch  with  swift-running  water 
one  or  two  feet  deep ;  the  water  ran  like  a  mill-race,  and  did  not 
creep  as  in  a  canal.  Then  there  were  lateral  ditches  crossing  the 


30  SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 

fields,  a  ridge  ou  each  side  preventing  overflow.  Men  were  at 
work  watering  this  bed  or  that,  breaking  a  hole  in  the  low  dyke 
with  a  spade,  and  then  the  water  crept,  slowly  widening,  over 
the  face  of  the  earth.  Some  beds  were  black  with  recent  water- 
ing. I  walked  about  over  the  little  fields.  The  earth  was  soft 
like  ashes.  There  is  not  a  stone  as  big  as  a  baby's  foot  for  miles 
and  miles.  All  sorts  of  vegetables  had  been  planted ;  some  grain 
was  growing,  and  there  was  a  field  of  the  curious  dark-green  al- 
falfa, which  sends  its  roots  to  water,  six,  eight,  or  ten  feet,  and 
can  be  cut  four  or  five  times  a  season. 

Everybody  was  enthusiastic.  A  man  from  Greeley,  an  irriga- 
tion experiment,  said  that  colony  was  the  richest  agricultural 
community  in  the  world,  and  that  this  was  a  better  location.  A 
patch  of  onions  about  big  enough  for  an  ordinary  door-yard  was 
said  to  have  yielded  $300  worth  of  onions  last  year.  Mr.  Wor- 
rell, who  has  followed  irrigation  for  thirty-two  years  in  Califor- 
nia, was  enthusiastic,  and  showed  cottonwoods  fourteen  feet  high, 
the  growth  of  a  single  season. 

We  traveled  out  of  the  bottom  to  the  plateau,  to  which  the 
rise  is  almost  imperceptible.  It  stretched  away,  nobody  knows, 
I  think,  how  far.  It  was  buffalo  grass,  sage  brush,  cactus,  soap 
weed;  here  and  there  a  flock  of  sheep  with  an  unmoving  shep- 
herd; immense,  and  almost  soundless  and  solitary.  A  ditch  was 
crossed  on  this  high  plateau,  and  all  of  it  can  be  watered,  and 
will  be. 

And  how  many  people  know  what  is  being  done  in  this  out-of- 
the-way  place  —  in  this  desert — if  there  is  one  in  Kansas  !  Mr. 
Bedell,  the  surveyor,  classified  the  ditches  for  me  as  follows : 

No.  1,  owned  by  Senator  Plumb  and  others,  composing  the 
Great  Eastern  Irrigating  Company,  leaves  the  river  seven  miles 
above  Lakin,  is  thirty-four  feet  wide,  is  surveyed  for  twenty-two 
miles,  and  will  water  the  plateau  in  Sequoyah  and  Kearney 
counties.  Work  has  begun,  and  will  be  pushed  to  completion. 

No.  2  leaves  the  river  on  the  south  side,  nearly  opposite;  owned 
by  gentlemen  connected  with  the  Santa  Fe  road,  called  the  Min- 
nehaha  Irrigation  Company;  is  twenty-eight  feet  wide,  twenty- 
two  miles  long,  and  will  water  bottom  lands  on  south  side  of  the 
river. 


A   LETTER   ON   AGRICULTURE.  31 

No.  3  leaves  the  river  at  Deerfield;  twelve  feet  wide,  fifteen 
miles  long;  has  water  running,  and  will  irrigate  the  plateau  north 
of  Garden  City. 

No.  4,  Jones's  ditch,  leaves  the  river  at  Sherlock;  waters^bot- 
tom  around  that  station. 

No.  5,  original  ditch,  waters  bottoms  between  Garden  City  and 
the  river;  is  in  operation  as  already  described. 

Now  read  the  figures.  This  system,  as  completed,  can  now 
water  60,000  acres;  the  whole  system,  as  at  present  devised,  will 
be  completed  within  six  months,  and  will  water  262,000  acres, 
which  means  that  land  now  waste  will  be  made  to  yield  every 
vegetable,  fruit  and  flower  known  to  Kansas.  It  means  that  at 
an  elevation  of  3,000  feet  above  the  sea  it  is  proposed  to  cultivate 
a  great  field  or  garden  262,000  acres  in  extent.  People  here, 
who  seem  to  be  cool-headed  and  reasonable,  say  it  will  be  done. 
They  tell  me  that  in  a  very  few  short  years,  at  farthest,  I  will  see 
this  recent  solitude  peopled,  and  that  old  hackneyed  Kansas  real- 
estate  phrase  about  the  "desert  blossoming  like  the  rose,"  made 
a  reality. 

This  is  a  great  scheme;  one  that,  in  its  amplitude,  might  well 
attract  the  genius  of  Colonel  Mulberry  Sellers;  and  yet  the  gen- 
tlemen interested  are  the  farthest  possible  removed  in  character 
from  that  enthusiastic  projector.  They  are  backing  their  opinion 
with  a  great  deal  of  money. 

The  main  ditches,  or  canals,  are  excavated  with  plow  and 
scraper,  and  water  is  furnished  from  them  at  $1  per  acre  of  land 
cultivated  during  the  growing  season.  Mr.  Bedell  believes  the 
whole  Arkansas  bottom,  as  far  as  Great  Bend,  165  miles,  can  be 
successfully  irrigated,  though  it  is  doubtful  if  there  are  many 
points  where  as  much  land  can  be  brought  under  water  as  at 
Garden  City. 

There  is  something  fascinating  in  the  idea  of  every  man  being 
his  own  rain-maker,  and  being  independent  of  shifting  clouds  and 
uncertain  winds.  The  enthusiastic  irrigator  with  a  shovel  can 
bring  on  a  light  or  heavy  shower,  and  by  lifting  a  sluice  gate 
organize  a  thunder  storm,  and  he  can  run  all  the  varieties  of 
elemental  disturbance  at  once  if  he  chooses.  The  "  windows  of 
Heaven  "  are  nothing  to  him :  he  runs  the  machine  himself. 


32  SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 

My  own  doubt  was,  whether  the  Arkansas  would  at  all  stages, 
supply  the  water  needed.  Mr.  Bedell  has  measured  the  river 
repeatedly,  and  says  the  supply  is  practically  inexhaustible.  The 
Arkansas  is  a  two-story  river,  and  if  the  water  in  sight  were  ex- 
hausted, another  supply  would  rise  from  the  river's  bed.  I  have 
heard  this  sub-irrigation  or  basement  theory  disputed,  but  there 
seems  to  be  no  reasonable  doubt  of  its  correctness.  A  hole  dug 
in  the  ground  many  feet  away  from  the  river  or  from  any  irriga- 
tion ditch  soon  begins  to  fill  with  water. 

So  we  have  the  start  of  another  of  the  numerous  "big  things" 
of  Kansas.  It  has  just  begun ;  last  year  there  were  500  acres  in 
cultivation;  this  year  1,200;  next  year — but  it  is  time  to  end 
the  first  lesson  in  agriculture. 


MOUNTAINS  AND  MEXICANS. 


THE  train  bound  west  that  reached  Garden  City  on  the  even- 
ing of  Thursday,  May  4th,  was  crowded  with  people.  Where 
they  were  all  going,  or  why  they  were  going,  it  would  puzzle  a 
wise  head  to  answer;  but  the  long  train  was  full.  The  smoking 
car  and  the  first  coaches  were  filled  with  Italians,  bound  to  work 
on  the  railroads  in  the  mountain  country;  the  following  day 
coaches  and  the  three  sleepers  were  filled  with  a  mixed  multitude 
of  men,  women  and  children,  destined  for  a  hundred  different 
points  in  the  immense  country  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  be- 
yond them  to  the  Pacific.  Some  of  the  men  were  going  in  search 
of  health ;  some  to  prospect  for  mines ;  some  to  look  after  invest- 
ments already  made;  some  to  buy  cattle;  and  a  large  number, 
it  seemed,  without  any  definite  purpose,  hoping  that  in  the  land 
to  which  they  were  going  something  would  turn  up;  and  the 
women  and  children  were  going  because  men  had  gone  or  were 
going,  since  it  is  the  lot  of  wives  and  babies  in  this  world  to  fol- 
low on. 

One  reason,  I  think,  why  so  many  people  travel  now,  is  because 
they  can  do  so  easily  and  comfortably.  Let  but  the  color  of 
gold  show  in  mines,  or  cattle,  or  town  lots,  or  anything  else  which 
can  be  bought  or  sold,  and  men  will  start  for  it  a  thousand  miles 
on  foot;  given  a  wagon  road,  and  hundreds  will  follow  with 
teams;  given  a  railroad,  and  thousands  join  the  rush.  So  it  is 
that  twice  every  twenty-four  hours  these  great  passenger  trains 
of  the  Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa  Fe  road  fly  back  and  forth 
across  the  west  half  of  the  continent;  and  between  them  the 
slower  emigrant  train,  loaded  to  the  last  inch.  Money  and  skill 
have  so  perfected  railroad  transportation,  so  increased  its  speed 
and  comfort,  that  a  great  army  of  people  cast  their  eyes  on  ob- 
jects a  thousand  miles  off,  and  straightway  arise  and  buy  a  rail- 
road ticket,  rather  than  stay  at  home. 

(33) 


34  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

The  last  object  at  which  a  Kansas  party,  who  sat  together, 
looked  with  interest,  was  the  beginning  of  the  great  irrigating 
ditch  above  Lakin,  of  which  mention  has  been  made  in  a  pre- 
vious letter.  It  wound  around  in  the  low  lands  like  a  serpent, 
bound  in  time  to  carry  water,  which  is  life,  to  thousands  of  Kan- 
sas acres. 

The  next  object  of  interest  reached  was  the  railroad  eating 
house  at  Coolidge.  The  supper  here  was  a  marvel.  Without  a 
butcher,  or  grocer,  or  gardener,  within  hundreds  of  miles,  here 
was  an  elegant  supper,  which  might  be  said  to  have  been  brought 
from  the  ends  of  the  earth  and  set  down  in  the  middle  of  the 
American  desert.  There  is  no  use  for  fairy  tales  any  longer. 
They  have  lost  the  charming  feature  of  impossibility.  All  they 
tell  happens  now  every  day.  The  railroad  is  the  magic  carpet  of 
the  old  story,  which  transports  the  wisher  and  his  supper  whither- 
soever he  will. 

The  long  stretch  of  level  plains,  lonely  and  monotonous,  was 
traversed  in  the  night.  One  great  State  was  left,  and  the  bound- 
ary of  another  long  since  crossed,  when  the  writer  awoke,  just  at 
what  North  Carolinians  call  the  "daylight  down,"  to  look  out  of 
the  window  at  a  new  country.  The  train  was  evidently  climbing 
a  long  and  steady  ascent.  The  prairie  rose  in  a  great  yellow 
slope  to  what  looked  like  an  immense  line  of  ruined  earthwork ; 
and  isolated,  stunted  trees  were  scattered  about.  The  sun  had  not 
fully  risen  above  the  horizon,  and  the  pallid  full  moon  was  still  rid- 
ing high.  Suddenly,  against  the  cold  gray  of  the  sky,  appeared 
what  looked  like  a  great  amethyst,  with  streaks  of  pearly  white, 
and  below  it  an  enormous  sloping  mass  of  dark  purple,  shading 
away  to  brown  at  the  base.  It  was  at  last,  after  hundreds  of 
level  miles,  a  mountain.  One  who  has  never  left  the  plains  in 
which  he  was  born  can  know  nothing  of  the  feelings  with  which 
one  whose  childish  eyes  daily  looked,  at  morn  and  eve,  upon  the 
solemn  splendors  of  a  great  mountain,  gazes,  after  months  or 
years  of  absence,  once  more  upon  the  mountain's  eternal  face. 
It  is  the  face  of  an  old  friend,  no  matter  in  what  land  it  may 
greet  the  sun,  or  gather  round  itself  the  mantle  of  the  storm. 

As  the  train  moved  on  —  now  advancing  toward  the  mountain, 


MOUNTAINS    AND    MEXICANS.  35 

now  turning  from  it — the  sun  rose,  and  the  great  shadows  thrown 
by  the  mountain  upon  itself  shifted  from  time  to  time.  What 
first  seemed  a  solitary  peak,  changed  to  two,  with  a  great  gorge 
between  them ;  and  stretching  away,  like  the  foaming  wake  of  a 
great  ship,  was  a  range  of  lower  mountains,  white  with  snow,  as  if 
the  ice  of  an  arctic  sea  had  suddenly  been  broken  up,  and  as  the 
mighty  waves  had  sprung  heavenward,  bearing  the  broken  ice- 
floes, they  had  been  frozen  again  to  eternal  stillness.  The  moun- 
tain was  the  Spanish  Peak,  and  the  occasion  was  a  memorable 
one  to  him  who  writes  of  it,  since  it  was  his  first  sight  of  any  por- 
tion of  the  Rocky  Mountains. 

Comparisons  were  then  in  order,  and  many  a  mountain  view 
was  recalled,  but  in  vain.  The  Alps,  the  White  Mountains,  the 
Green  Mountains,  the  Alleghanies,  the  Blue  Ridge — none  of 
these  resemble  the  Rocky  Mountains,  save  in  the  fact  that  they  are 
elevations.  There  is,  between  all  these  and  the  Rocky  Mountains, 
this  great  difference:  they  are  mountains  which  may  be  loved; 
which  have  something  human  about  them;  in  whose  shelter  men 
rear  their  dear  homes;  but  the  Rocky  Mountains  are  not  so.  They 
are  the  frown  of  Nature  in  some  moment  of  convulsive  agony. 
These  mountains,  seen  at  earliest  morning  or  at  sunset,  seem  to 
relax  somewhat,  if  I  may  use  the  expression,  but  in  the  full  light 
of  day  they  are  always  gray,  and  cold,  and  stern. 

We  were  soon  amidst  scenes  as  unlike  Kansas  as  possible. 
Mountains  rose  on  both  sides.  The  Raton  range  appeared  in  full 
view,  with  Fisher's  Peak  and  its  pulpit-like  crowning  rock  near 
at  hand.  Foot-hills  mingled  in  confusion ;  the  world  seemed  left 
half  finished;  patches  of  little  green,  irrigated  fields  along  the 
Purgatoire,  and  adobe  houses,  plainly  told  that  we  were  in  a 
semi-Mexican  country ;  and  so  we  came  to  Trinidad. 

Some  people  see  one  thing  in  a  new  town;  some  another. 
Trinidad  has,  to  be  described,  gas-works,  water-works,  great  out- 
fitting stores,  manufactories,  banks,  and  all  that  goes  to  make  up 
a  smart  town ;  but  the  writer,  having  seen  and  written  about  all 
that  elsewhere,  some  five  hundred  times,  was  more  interested  in 
matters  new  to  him,  to  wit,  Mexicans,  adobes  and  burros. 

The  former  were  very  numerous.     Trinidad  was  originally 


36  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

settled  in  1860,  by  New-Mexican  people  who  came  up  from  the 
southward.  The  Americans  have  come  in  and  built  a  modern 
town,  and  with  the  latest  improvements.  But  there  are  six 
thousand  Mexicans  in  the  county  of  Las  Animas,  and  they  are 
represented  in  the  government  of  the  county  and  in  the  Legisla- 
ture. They  are  numerous  at  all  hours  in  the  streets  of  Trinidad ; 
not  lounging  in  the  sun  as  they  are  usually  represented,  but 
engaged  in  various  manual  avocations.  They  are  not  picturesque. 
They  wear  slouched  American  hats,  instead  of  sombreros,  and 
pants  without  suspenders,  and  coats  of  the  ready-made  order. 
That  garb  does  not  become  anybody  but  the  Northern  races.  In 
•coat  and  pants  all  the  dark  people,  from  the  Mexican  herdsman 
to  the  Japanese  embassador,  are  hideous.  One  secret  of  the  lim- 
ited success  of  Protestant  missionaries  in  their  labors,  is  their 
insistance  that  the  heathen  man  must  learn  English,  wear  pants, 
and  change  his  name  to  John  P.  Smith.  So  Mexicans,  having 
discarded  their  historical  dress  in  consequence  of  American  asso- 
ciation, are  not  improved  by  the  operation. 

The  Mexican,  meaning  by  that  the  farmer,  herdsman,  laborer 
or  teamster,  is  frequently  called  a  "  Greaser,"  and  is  regarded  by 
the  Smart  Aleck  of  nationalities,  to  wit,  Mr.  Yankee,  as  a  low 
creature.  Wishing  to  hear  the  counsel  for  the  defense,  if  any 
existed,  the  present  chronicler  made  bold  to  call  on  one  of  the 
Padres  in  Trinidad  and  ask  him  his  opinion  of  his  flock.  It 
may  be  premised,  however,  that  a  pastor  always  stands  up  for 
his  charge.  When  some  years  ago  the  Chinese  question  was 
"investigated"  in  San  Francisco,  a  large  number  of  red-nosed 
policemen  swore  that  a  Chinaman  could  not  become  a  Christian ; 
but  Rev.  Mr.  Gibson,  who  has  preached  to  the  Chinese  for  years, 
deposed,  like  a  little  man,  that  the  Chinese  made  an  excellent 
article  of  Presbyterians.  It  was  to  be  expected  that  the  Padre 
would  say  a  good  word,  but  his  testimony  was  unexpectedly  fa- 
vorable. He  was  an  Italian,  a  short  man  with  a  comfortable 
waistband;  a  large  nose,  bestrode  with  spectacles,  and  spoke 
English  in  the  velvety  voice  peculiar,  I  think,  to  priests,  and 
helped  his  words  with  the  shrug  of  the  shoulders,  possible  only 
with  Italians. 


MOUNTAINS   AND   MEXICANS.  37 

He  said,  in  substance,  that  newspaper  correspondents  had  been 
altogether  too  rapid  and  simultaneous  in  their  judgment  of  the 
Mexican  character.  No  people  could  be  understood  by  a  stranger, 
ignorant  of  their  language — and  the  Mexican  has  been  judged  by 
such.  He  is  not,  as  an  American  is,  a  man  of  business.  Why 
should  he  be?  Shut  out  from  all  the  world,  with  no  railroads, 
no  markets,  why  should  he  raise  what  he  cannot  sell?  But  talk 
to  the  Mexican  about  his  religion,  and  you  will  find  that  he  is  a 
theologian.  He  deserves  credit  for  being  what  he  is.  Sur- 
rounded for  centuries  by  Indians,  he  has  preserved  his  civiliza- 
tion, his  religion,  and  his  language.  His  Spanish  is  not  only 
correct;  it  is  elegant.  He  is  a  purist  in  the  matter  of  language. 
A  man  should  be  judged  by  his  heart;  and  the  Mexican  is  a  good- 
hearted  man.  He  is  attached  to  his  children,  and  he  is  the  soul 
of  hospitality.  Touching  the  question  of  blood,  and  the  state- 
ment often  made  that  the  Mexican  is  not  a  white  man,  but  a 
mongrel  Indian,  the  Padre  entered  a  denial.  The  common  Mexi- 
can is  the  descendant  of  the  common  Spaniard  who  came  with 
Cortez.  He  had  a  fashion  of  adopting  Indian  children,  whom 
he  raised  and  treated  as  his  own.  But  these  children  were  mar- 
ried, not  to  Mexicans,  but  to  other  Indians.  Possibly  illicit 
relations  had  grown  up  at  times  between  the  races.  "For,"  said 
the  Padre,  with  a  deprecatory  wave  of  the  hand  and  the  Medi- 
terranean shrug,  "we  are  all  but  men."  But  in  the  matter  of 
regular  and  legitimate  descent,  the  Mexican  is  no  Indian,  nor 
hybrid  Indian.  Much  more  said  the  priest  in  the  same  direc 
tion,  which  I  will  not  set  down  here,  but  add  that  later  in  the 
day  I  met  Rev.  Mr.  Darley,  who,  as  a  Presbyterian  missionary, 
has  visited,  as  he  says,  every  Mexican  family  in  Colorado,  and 
who  is  a  thorough  Spanish  scholar  and  edits  a  paper  in  that  lan- 
guage. Mr.  Darley  confirmed  much  that  his  theological  enemy 
had  stated,  especially  in  regard  to  the  matter  of  language,  though 
he  differed  in  regard  to  the  pedigree  question.  In  short,  he  gave 
the  swarthy  adopted  American  a  generally  good  character. 

I  have  given  these  opinions  as  new,  to  me  at  least,  and  reserve 
my  own  till  a  later  period.     I  may  add  that  both  clergymen  gave 
3 


38  SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 

me  information  regarding  that  curious  religious  order  among  the 
Mexicans,  the  Penitentes,  of  which  I  may  say  more  hereafter. 

In  regard  to  adobe  structures,  which  excite  the  curiosity  of 
visitors,  I  have  only  to  say  that  an  adobe  house  is  a  mud  house. 
The  mud  order  of  architecture  varies,  but  it  is  always  muddy. 
Many  Americans  in  Trinidad  have  adopted  the  adobe,  and  by 
concealing  the  material  with  plaster,  a  very  creditable  structure 
is  the  result.  The  large  Catholic  church  at  Trinidad  is  built  of 
roughly-made  mud  bricks,  and  looks  like  a  great  sod  house.  The 
adobe  and  the  Mexican  belong  together.  As  the  American  comes 
in,  brick  and  wood  are  beginning  to  be  used ;  in  the  newest  towns 
are  used  altogether.  The  flat-roofed  adobe  house,  looking  like 
pictures  one  sees  in  the  Bible  dictionaries,  will  soon  be  remanded 
to  the  rural  districts,  and  future  newspaper  correspondents  will 
describe  it  no  more. 

The  burro  is  numerous  in  Trinidad.  A  procession  of  burros, 
each  little  ass  with  a  load  of  wood  on  his  back  as  large  as  him- 
self, is  a  grave  spectacle.  At  this  season  of  the  year  the  burro 
is  seen  in  families,  and  so  the  procession  has  its  variety.  First 
comes  old  Mrs.  B. ;  then  a  young  burro,  about  as  tall  as  a  saw- 
horse;  then  another  burro  with  a  little  Mexican  on  deck;  then 
more  burros,  big  and  little ;  while  at  the  tail  of  the  procession 
comes  the  owner  of  the  caravan,  a  middle-aged  Mexican.  Thus 
all  ages  and  both  sexes  may  be  represented,  but  no  member  of 
either  family  ever  smiles.  Still  the  burro,  for  all  his  humble 
and  self-depreciatory  expression,  is  universally  well  spoken  of. 
He  has  many  friends.  At  least  the  talk  is  eulogistic.  His  posi- 
tion is  not  unlike  that  of  an  editor  in  politics:  he  gets  the 
complimentary  notices,  and  in  return  carries  all  the  wood  in  the 
shape  of  candidates  that  can  be  loaded  on  his 'long-suffering 
back. 

Thus  I  have  mentioned  the  striking  figures  that  attracted  me 
as  I  approached  the  frontier  of  New  Mexico.  As  for  Trinidad  r 
it  is  a  typical  mountain  town,  full  of  enterprise  and  hope,  and 
with  a  big  faith  in  coal  mines  and  the  cattle  trade,  of  which  it  is 
the  center.  The  town  is  not  yet  over  its  youthful  and  festive 
days.  With  many  first-class  business  men  and  exemplary  citi- 


MOUNTAINS   AND    MEXICANS.  39 

zens,  there  are  many  gentlemen  whose  lives  are  devoted  to  sinful 
games.  Occasionally  the  festivities  are  summarily  abbreviated. 
The  last  shooting,  however,  was  several  weeks  ago.  The  de- 
parted was  a  "formerly  of  Kansas"  man,  and  was  known,  from 
an  obliquity  of  vision,  as  "  Cock-Eyed  Frank."  One  sound  busi- 
ness rule,  "  Pay  as  you  go,"  is  rigidly  enforced ;  at  least  I  saw 
conspicuously  posted,  the  following  lines: 

"Jawbone  don't  go. 
Give  me  an  ante." 

This  is  submitted  for  the  benefit  of  the  learned  in  such  matters. 
While  we  are  speaking  of  the  wayward  and  erring,  I  will  say 
for  the  benefit  of  those  who  believe  in  Bret  Harte's  stories,  that 
I  saw  a  reduced  copy  of  Mr.  John  Oakhurst.  He  had  just  been 
propelled  into  the  gutter  by  an  imperious  barkeeper.  He  did  not 
wear  Mr.  Oakhurst's  black  suit,  nor  his  varnished  boots,  but  I 
noticed  that  as  he  rose  from  the  earth  he  carefully  dusted  the  few 
clothes  he  had  on  with  his  pocket  handkerchief.  It  is  pleasant 
to  meet  in  real  life  those  characters  who  have  so  charmed  us  in 
fiction. 

Quite  a  group  of  Kansas  men  were  found  in  Trinidad,  in  the 
solid  business  circles.  One  of  these  was  Thomas  C.  Stevens, 
once  of  Carney,  Stevens  &  Co.,  of  Leavenworth.  Mr.  Stevens's 
descriptions  of  gentlemen  he  formerly  knew  in  Kansas,  who  com- 
bined patriotism  and  business,  in  the  proportion  of  one  part  of 
the  former  to  about  1,000  of  the  latter,  while  not  marked  by  any 
special  elegance  of  diction  or  rhetorical  ornament,  were  models 
of  clear,  powerful,  seafaring  English. 

I  had  hoped  to  see  Raton  Pass  by  clear  daylight,  but  the  train 
passed  under  a  cloudy  sky  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning.  Pulled 
by  two  engines,  the  train  of  seven  cars  slowly  climbed  the  ascent 
till  near  the  summit  the  fog  shut  out  the  prospect.  The  tunnel 
passed,  and  the  long  down  slope  commenced,  the  fog  lifted  and 
the  clouds  began  to  break.  The  mountains  on  either  side  seemed 
to  rise  higher  and  to  almost  tear  the  drifting  clouds,  but  erelong 
they  parted  as  the  waves  of  the  Red  Sea  parted  before  marching 
Israel,  and  through  an  opening  in  the  eastern  hills  a  burst  of 
sunshine  lit  up  heaven  and  earth  as  we  descended  to  the  plains 
of  New  Mexico. 


THE  NEW-MEXICAN  REVOLUTION. 


THE  locomotive  climbing  the  Raton  Pass  (where  once  the 
hardy  scout  or  hunter  carefully  and  toilsomely  picked  his  way 
on  foot),  surmounting  with  slow  but  ceaseless  labor  the  grade  of 
185  feet  to  the  mile,  never  ceasing  till  the  crest  is  reached  and 
the  pines  on  the  summit  quiver  to  the  whistle's  blast,  and  then 
feeling  its  way  carefully  down  the  slope  to  finally  rush  with  a 
triumphant  rattle  and  roar  from  the  shadows  of  the  mountain 
into  the  sunlight  vastness  of  the  plain,  is  a  symbol  of  the  slow- 
ness with  which  a  new  and  intense  civilization  approached  the 
confines  of  New  Mexico,  and  the  suddenness  with  which  it  finally 
invaded  and  overran  that  hitherto  silent  and  voiceless  empire. 

The  locomotive  has  always  seemed  to  me  the  perfection  of 
modern  mechanism.  It  embodies  so  much  power  with  a  grace 
that  is  all  its  own.  It  calls  into  play  in  its  construction  all  that 
the  hand  and  eye  and  brain  of  the  mechanic  has  learned,  and  is 
perfectly  adapted  to  its  purposes.  When  it  appears  for  the  first 
time  in  a  country  it  marks  the  departure  of  the  old  and  the 
coming  of  the  new,  and  not  merely  what  is  new,  but  what  is 
newest. 

This  thought  has  followed  me  ever  since  I  entered  New 
Mexico.  The  old  order,  surprised  suddenly,  has  not  had  time  to 
fly  or  to  change,  and  stands  mute  in  the  presence  of  the  new. 
There  stands  the  sun-burned  herdsman  watching  his  flocks  in  the 
waste;  here  the  Mexican  woman,  with  her  shawl  over  her  head, 
looks  shyly  from  the  door  of  the  adobe  hut,  just  as  she  has 
looked  for  all  time ;  while  the  locomotive  dashes  by  them  and  the 
telephone  wire  is  strung  over  their  heads  to  communicate  witli 
ranches  forty  miles  in  the  interior.  There  has  never  been  any- 
thing like  it  in  the  world  before. 

When  one  sees  this  country  he  realizes  that  nothing  but  the 
railroad  was  powerful  enough  to  affect  it.  The  slow  march  of 

(40) 


THE   NEW-MEXICAN    EEVOLUTION.  41 

settlements,  such  as  the  older  Western  States  knew,  would  not 
have  crossed  New  Mexico  from  one  border  to  the  other  in  a 
hundred  years.  The  vastness  of  these  tawny  plains  is  beyond 
the  reach  of  descriptive  language;  the  loneliness  of  the  buttes, 
each  with  its  castle-like  crest  of  rock,  which  rise  afar  against 
the  sky ;  the  gaunt  desolateness  of  the  ravines,  torn  by  the  floods 
from  the  mountains;  the  ruggedness  of  the  passes,  apparently 
sunken  craters,  the  "  volcano's  blinded  eye,"  seem  to  defy  human 
invasion  coming  by  the  means  which  other  empires  have  known. 
A  solitary  traveler  is  a  mere  dot  on  the  surface,  a  mote  between 
the  earth  and  sky ;  a  caravan  is  like  a'  piece  of  driftwood  on 
the  ocean.  Between  the  great  plain  and  the  Western  ocean,  the 
goal  of  the  traveler,  runs  a  dark  line  of  frowning  mountains, 
continuous,  like  a  prison  wall,  and  behind  them  are  seen  the 
snowy  crests  of  other  mountains,  as  if  to  forbid  further  advance. 
It  is  as  if  the  inexorable  Spirit  of  the  Waste  brooded  over  all, 
and  uttered  to  all  who  ventured  here  the  command,  "  March  on/* 

Here  is  a  country  known  to  civilized  man  for  three  hundred 
years,  that  in  that  period  never  produced  an  invention,  nor  wrote 
or  printed  a  book,  nor  had  any  commerce  save  that  of  wagon 
caravans;  now  in  the  space  of  two  years  filled  with  railroads, 
telegraphs,  telephones,  iron  bridges  and  daily  papers. 

From  Raton  to  Las  Vegas  the  traveler  sees  on  one  side  a  plain 
bounded  by  mountains;  on  the  other  a  plain  as  boundless  as  the 
sea,  sometimes  broken  by  the  buttes  of  which  I  have  spoken, 
sometimes  by  a  mass  of  jagged  rock  thrust  up  from  the  plain 
like  a  wave.  As  a  rule,  it  is  grass  —  tawny  now,  but  green  when 
the  rains  come  in  July  and  August.  Here  and  there  are  scat- 
tered herds  of  cattle  and  flocks  of  sheep,  numbering  thousands 
in  all,  but  seeming  few  on  account  of  the  vast  expanse  over  which 
they  range.  They  did  not  seem  the  long-horned  wild  cattle  that 
we  associate  with  the  southern  prairies,  but  more  like  the  domes- 
tic cattle  of  the  North.  In  fact,  the  very  brutes  have  become 
subject  to  the  influence  of  the  new  civilization.  The  short-horn 
has  been  introduced,  and  the  old  long-horned  racer  is  disappear- 
ing. The  whole  cattle  business  is  passing  from  the  hands  of 
individuals  into  those  of  corporations  and  associations.  Rufus 


42  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

Hatch,  of  Wall  street,  was  at  Dodge  City  the  other  day,  on  busi- 
ness connected  with  one  of  these  corporations,  the  capital  of 
which  is  furnished  in  the  East.  I  think  everything  in  this  world 
will  be  run,  eventually,  by  a  president,  secretary,  treasurer  and 
board  of  directors. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  locomotive  as  a  symbol  of  civilization, 
but  there  is  another  quite  as  expressive.  It  is  the  empty  fruit 
and  oyster  can.  These  are  now  strewed  all  over  New  Mexico 
and  the  world.  These  evidences  of  departed  concentrated  pro- 
visions are  everywhere  now ;  in  the  wake  of  the  Jeannette  and 
the  trail  of  African  Stanley.  A  visitor  to  the  interior  of  the 
pyramids  finds  the  former  receptacle  of  cove  oysters,  and  if  you 
take  the  wings  of  morning  and  fly  to  the  uttermost  parts  of  the 
earth  you  will  light  on  a  sardine  box.  When  the  would-be  ex- 
plorer begins  to  recite,  "  This  is  the  forest  primeval,"  his  pride  is 
crushed  by  discovering  the  tomato  can  of  a  prior  visitor.  How 
perfectly  New  Mexico  has  been  subjugated  is  shown  by  the 
amount  of  old  tin  strewed  over  the  territory  to  tempt  the  appe- 
tite of  her  goats. 

Las  Vegas  was  visited  for  a  few  moments,  and  then  the  train 
was  taken  for  the  Hot  Springs  and  the  Hotel  de  Montezuma. 
We  saw,  however,  before  leaving  Las  Vegas,  a  large  party  of 
Philadelphia  excursionists  who  had  just  visited  the  Springs  under 
the  conductorship  of  Col.  Edward  Haren,  of  the  Santa  Fe  emi- 
gration, excursion  and  recreation  bureau.  Two  or  three  parties 
of  New  Englanders  have  been  brought  through  the  country,  be- 
sides the  Philadelphians.  It  seems  to  be  the  purpose  to  exhibit 
to  the  newly-enlightened  New-Mexicans  all  the  different  varieties 
of  their  fellow-citizens  of  the  United  States. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  dark  range  of  mountains  constantly 
rising  on  ihe  traveler's  path  as  he  goes  south.  Breaking  through 
these  mountains  is  a  brawling  stream  called  Gallinas  —  (double  1 
sounded  like  y.)  The  little  river  has  cut  its  way  down  to  the 
base  of  the  mountains  through  wooded  defiles  and  frowning 
canons.  Occasionally  it  runs  through  a  little  valley,  seeming  the 
bed  of  some  former  lake,  and  in  one  of  these  little  circular  val- 
leys, just  where  the  river  is  to  break  through  the  last  wall  of  rock 


THE    NEW-MEXICAN    REVOLUTION.  43 

and  debouch  upon  the  plain,  are  the  Las  Vegas  Hot  Springs  and 
the  hotels,  and  the  group  of  cottages. 

The  Springs  have  been  known  nobody  knows  how  long.  The 
Indians  reverenced  them,  just  as  they  did  the  Great  Spirit  Springs 
in  Kansas.  When  the  Mexican  colonists  of  the  Las  Vegas  grant 
came  up  from  the  South  they  knew  their  value  and  embraced 
them  in  the  land  they  took  in  severalty.  Thirty-three  years  ago, 
so  Rev.  Mr.  Reed,  who  was  then  an  army  chaplain  at  Santa  Fe, 
tells  me,  the  army  doctors  were  accustomed  to  send  soldiers,  the 
victims  of  their  own  vices,  to  the  springs  to  be  cured.  The  old- 
timers  aforesaid  knew  no  more  about  the  chemical  analysis  of 
water  than  the  writer  of  this, i.  e.,  nothing;  they  only  knew  that 
the  water  did  good.  When  the  Americans  began  to  hunt  up 
everything  valuable,  an  adobe  hotel  was  built  at  the  springs, 
then  the  stone  building,  the  Hot  Springs  House;  and  finally  the 
Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa  Fe  people  built  the  Montezuma  Hotel, 
which  I  believe  to  be  the  finest  frame  hotel  building  in  America. 
There  are  larger  buildings  at  Saratoga,  but  none  so  elegantly 
finished.  The  existence  of  this  fine  building  in  a  lonely  valley, 
traversed  a  few  years  ago  only  by  a  few  Mexicans  and  burros, 
is  the  most  wonderful  thing  yet.  Every  stick  in  this  great  house, 
four  stories  high  and  three  hundred  feet  long,  was  brought  from 
the  northern  verge  of  the  United  States.  All  this  mass  of  fur- 
niture, mirrors,  carpets,  pictures,  silver  ware,  and  other  details, 
superior  to  anything  I  know  in  Kansas,  was  brought  over  the 
mountains.  Gas,  water,  electric  bells,  pianos,  billiard  tables,  bar 
fixtures,  everything  known  to  a  modern  and  fashionable  hotel, 
has  been  collected  here.  Everything  is  finished  and  ready  for 
the  guests;  two  hundred  fine  rooms  await  them.  The  bath 
houses  have  a  capacity  of  five  hundred  baths  per  day.  The  Ar- 
kansas Hot  Springs,  known  and  used  for  the  better  part  of  a 
century,  have  no  such  conveniences. 

Desirous  of  seeing  something  of  the  surroundings,  we  took  a 
pedestrian  trip  four  miles  up  the  Gallinas.  This  streams  flows, 
cold  and  swift,  from  the  snows  of  the  Rocky  Mountains.  It  is 
full  of  eddies  and  falls  and  whirls  and  dimples,  and  has,  when 
running  over  the  rock,  the  color  of  topaz.  The  mountains, 


44  SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 

closing  in  a  short  distance  above  the  hotel,  leave  for  three  miles 
a  passage  for  the  stream  nowhere  one  hundred  feet  wide,  includ- 
ing the  banks  proper.  Occasionally  a  jutting  cliff  drove  us  into 
or  across  the  stream.  A  geologist  would  have  gone  quite  wild. 
Such  strata,  so  many  colored,  so  twisted,  overlapped  and  braided, 
I  never  saw  before.  Several  times  the  stream  was  crossed  by  a 
stratum  of  curiously-streaked  rock,  with  bands  varying  from  pure 
white  to  red.  The  stripes  were  extremely  delicate  —  sometimes, 
though  clearly  defined,  not  over  a  tenth  of  an  inch  wide.  For 
want  of  a  better  name  we  called  it  "  Ribbon  Rock."  On  the 
slopes  of  the  mountain  I  saw  nearly  every  evergreen  common  to 
the  United  States,  save  the  white  pine  and  the  hemlock.  The 
firs  were  especially  beautiful. 

After  walking,  sliding,  climbing  and  scrambling  for  four  miles 
the  defile  widened,  and  we  came  to  a  point  where  there  were 
grassy  slopes  and  a  wood-cutter's  camp.  Here  we  took  the  trail, 
made  by  packers  long  ago,  to  return.  The  narrow  trail  led  far 
up  the  mountain-side,  rising  at  times  above  the  growth  of  the 
pines.  As  we  marched  along,  the  sky  became  overcast  with 
leaden  clouds.  Far  below  we  could  see  the  windings  of  the  Galli- 
nas.  The  wind  sprang  up,  and  we  heard  the  plaintive  moaning 
of  the  pines,  and  a  few  flakes  of  snow  began  to  fall.  In  that 
high  solitude,  and  under  that  sky,  and  amid  the  snow,  which  we 
could  see  was  falling  heavily  in  the  distant  mountains,  we  both 
spoke,  as  if  by  a  common  impulse,  of  the  little  group  in  Bret 
Harte's  most  pathetic  story,  "  The  Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat."  Not 
doomed,  however,  to  a  fate  like  theirs,  we  pushed  on,  and  were 
soon  at  our  temporary  home,  the  Montezuma. 

Here  a  pleasing  and  curious  scene  presented  itself.  Mingled 
with  the  guests  from  all  parts  of  the  country,  and  visitors  from 
Las  Vegas,  was  a  group  of  country  Mexicans,  such  as  live  in  the 
defiles  of  the  Gallinas.  The  women  mostly  wore  their  black 
shawls  over  their  heads,  but  there  was  one  conspicuous  by  a  bon- 
net. They  looked  wonderingly  at  the  building,  the  palace  they 
had  seen  rise  before  their  eyes  within  the  last  few  months.  A 
man,  with  a  few  women,  ventured  up  the  first  stairway  and  into 
the  long  hall,  with  its  carpets  and  bright  gas  fixtures.  The 


THE    NEW-MEXICAN    REVOLUTION.  45 

women  stopped,  but  he  ventured  alone  some  distance,  and  then 
called  to  the  others  to  come  on,  as  he  saw  no  danger.  At  dinner- 
time they  ventured  into  the  dining-room.  The  men  wore  their 
hats  in,  but,  when  requested,  removed  them  and  placed  them  on 
the  rack,  seeing  which  the  lady  with  the  bonnet  returned  and 
removed  her  head-gear  also.  Their  evident  desire  to  conform 
to  the  usages  of  society,  and  their  quiet  demeanor,  attracted  uni- 
versal commendation. 

This  hotel  is  to  the  people  a  teacher.  It  will  instruct  them. 
Its  influence  will  some  of  these  days  be  seen  in  a  hundred  now 
unknown  comforts  in  every  poor  Mexican  adobe  within  fifty 
miles. 

The  hotels  at  the  Springs  have  been  evoked  by  the  same  great 
enterprise  which  has  done  so  much  for  Kansas  and  New  Mexico. 
To  the  invalid  or  the  tourist,  who  needs  change  as  a  medicine 
for  mind  or  body,  or  both,  this  resort  is  now  open.  I  would  ad- 
vise that  the  visit  be  made  not  earlier  than  the  latter  part  of 
May  or  early  in  June.  I  would  advise,  also,  that  the  first  visit 
be  made  soon,  while  the  great  change  which  this  letter  has  dis- 
cussed is  going  on.  The  weariness  of  this  world  is  the  uniformity 
to  which  it  is  being  reduced.  While  there  is  something  left  as 
God  made  it,  let  us  for  a  time  enjoy  it.  It  is  here  now;  it  will 
be  gone  to-morrow. 


FROM  LAS  VEGAS  TO  SANTA  Ffi. 


LAS  VEGAS  is  two  towns.  The  Mexicans,  pushing  slowly  to 
the  northward,  started  a  town  in  1835,  and  with  the  railroad 
came  the  Americans  and  started  another,  and  the  two  lie  in  long 
lines,  parallel  with  each  other,  with  a  row  of  houses  and  a  street- 
car line  connecting  them  like  the  membrane  which  harnessed  the 
Siamese  twins.  The  American  town  has  the  railroad  buildings 
for  its  nucleus,  and  is  all  American.  The  Mexican  town  is  not 
entirely  Mexican,  and  the  plaza  is  a  compromise.  Iron-front 
brick  buildings,  such  as  small  towns  have  in  Kansas,  surround 
it;  but  many  of  the  names  on  the  signs  are  Mexican.  The  most 
frequent  name  is  Romero.  I  think  Romero  must  be  Mexican  for 
Smith. 

New  Las  Vegas  has  its  daily  newspaper,  the  Optic,  and  the 
other  Las  Vegas  the  Gazette,  but  neither  is  published  on  what 
may  be  called  Mexican  territory.  Old  Las  Vegas  has  the  Jesuits' 
College  and  the  great  Catholic  church,  and  the  largest  hotel, 
"The  Plaza."  The  post  office  is  as  near  as  possible  made  conve- 
nient to  both  towns. 

Las  Vegas  has  a  boom.  It  claims  7,000  people,  and  business 
lots  have  been  sold  for  $3,000.  It  shares  in  the  glories  of  the 
Hot  Springs,  from  which  it  is  only  six  miles  distant.  It  is  the  end 
of  a  railroad  division.  It  has  all  the  elements  of  a  Kansas  town, 
when  said  town  is  "  on  the  rise." 

Las  Vegas  is  the  first  town  of  importance  where  a  traveler 
coming  south  on  the  Santa  Fe  can  see  the  Mexican  idea  of  town- 
building.  After  he  passes  that  point  the  novelty  will  wear  off. 
In  Las  Vegas  there  is  a  district  called  "The  Hill,"  which  is 
almost  exclusively  Mexican.  It  is  to  them  a  favorable  spot,  be- 
ing utterly  barren.  The  country  Mexican  seeks  the  water-side; 
the  town  Mexican  the  hills.  The  best  soil  for  the  cultivation  of 
"adobes"  is  a  coarse  gravel  mixed  with  sand,  and  strewn  with 

(46) 


FROM  LAS  VEGAS  TO  SANTA  F£.  47 

judicious  liberality  with  rocks  the  size  of  a  sixty-four-pound  shot. 
No  vestige  of  anything  green  should  grow  anywhere  near;  no 
tree,  no  flower,  no  blade  of  grass.  On  this  firm  foundation  the 
square,  flat-roofed  mud  house  is  reared.  It  is  all  dry  mud  except 
the  door,  the  window,  and  the  posts  which  hold  the  roof  and  pro- 
ject beyond  the  eaves.  It  is  necessary,  too,  that  the  mud  should 
be  ugly  mud.  In  the  composition  of  adobe  bricks,  the  soil  is 
generally  dug  up  in  front  of  the  proposed  establishment  and 
mixed  up  with  water — earth,  gravel  and  all;  consequently -the 
sides  of  the  house  are  ornamented  with  small  rocks  sticking  in 
the  wall.  Out  in  front  an  oven  made  of  mud  is  built.  Every- 
thing is  now  complete  except  to  carelessly  scatter  a  few  dogs 
around  the  outside,  and  insert  some  men,  women  and  children, 
especially  the  latter,  on  the  inside.  Standing  on  a  bleak,  wind- 
swept hill-side  one  of  these  houses  is  a  dismal  sight.  But  the 
tendency  of  the  people  is  toward  gregariousness.  On  regular 
streets  what  seems  a  single  house  will  extend  the  length  of  a 
block.  In  other  cases,  the  houses  are  built  around  a  court-yard. 
The  original  idea  is  to  have  a  court-yard  for  every  house,  but 
where  one  party  cannot  afford  so  much  house,  several  pool  their 
adobes,  and  complete  the  square. 

Las  Vegas  has  a  new  church,  built  by  the  Jesuits  —  a  huge 
affair,  very  wide  for  its  height,  and  built  of  dark-red  sandstone. 
With  its  two  square  towers  it  is  quite  imposing.  There  is  nearly 
always  something  picturesque  to  be  seen  about  Catholic  churches, 
and  entering  this  church  late  in  the  afternoon  I  saw  something 
new  to  me.  In  front  of  one  of  the  altars,  on  which  candles  were 
burning,  knelt  some  twenty  Mexican  women  and  several  young 
children.  An  emaciated  cur  sniffed  around,  and  distracted  the 
attention  of  the  little  black- eyed  boys.  The  devotions  of  the 
group  were  led  by  an  old  woman,  who  recited  prayers  in  Span- 
ish in  a  high-pitched,  nasal  voice,  and  with  the  greatest  possible 
velocity.  Once  she  broke  out  and  sang  a  few  lines,  in  a  high 
key  which  was  almost  a  scream,  and  then  resumed  as  before. 
The  women  kept  their  heads  and  faces  and  shoulders  covered 
with  their  black  shawls,  and  the  scene  was  weird  enough.  At 
last  the  meeting  broke  up,  with  a  sort  of  exhortation  by  the  old 


48  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

female  "class  leader,"  to  each  of  the  departing  worshippers.  A 
" female  prayer  meeting"  seemed  to  me  a  novelty  in  the  Catho- 
lic church. 

Taking  the  way  freight  in  the  early  morning,  the  journey  was 
resumed.  The  long  stretch  of  plains  from  Katon  to  Las  Vegas 
had  been  continued  to  the  point  of  monotony,  and  it  was  agreea- 
ble as  well  as  unexpected  to  find  that  the  road  soon  after  leav- 
ing Las  Vegas  entered  upon  constantly  varying  mountain 
scenery.  There  was  a  change,  too,  in  the  air  —  a  suspicion  that 
we  were  going  south.  The  mountains  seemed  less  stern  and  for- 
bidding than  they  had  before;  the  pine  forest  which  covered  the 
slopes  took  a  warmer  shade  of  green.  We  skirted  what  seemed 
to  have  once  been  a  huge  wall,  shutting  in  the  waters  of  an  in- 
land sea.  Here  were  capes,  promontories,  headlands,  and  long 
straight  lines  of  abandoned  shore,  and  down  the  slopes  were 
lines  marking  the  successive  ebbs  of  the  water  as  it  sank.  At 
the  crest  of  the  seemingly  unending  range  rose  a  perpendicular 
wall  of  rock,  such  as  is  common  in  the  Blue  Ridge  range  in  the 
South.  In  the  distance  rose  a  snowy  range,  now  in  plain  sight, 
now  disappearing,  as  the  train  wound  on  its  devious  way.  The 
engineering  difficulties  of  the  route  were  enormous,  but  were 
overcome  by  the  sharp  curves,  sometimes  defining  the  shape  of 
the  letter  S,  and  the  bold  grades,  once  deemed  impossible,  but 
now  surmounted  with  apparent  ease  by  the  enormous  engines 
which  modern  locomotive  builders  have  constructed. 

It  is  probable  that  every  defile  and  mountain  has  its  story,  but 
in  a  country  which,  until  recently,  had  few  "abstract  and  brief 
chroniclers  of  the  time,"  these  are  only  preserved  by  oral  tradi- 
tion. One  mountain  has,  however,  a  melancholy  celebrity.  A 
•  party  of  Mexicans  were  once  driven  to  its  summit  by  Indians, 
and  there  surrounded  till  they  perished  of  starvation  and  thirst. 
Through  the  clear  air  two  crosses  can  be  seen,  erected  to  mark 
the  spot  where  they  met  their  fate.  There,  on  the  wind-swept 
height,  in  the  atmosphere  where  nothing  decays,  those  crosses 
will  stand  to  tell  their  story  of  suffering  and  cruelty,  to  thou- 
sands on  thousands  of  passers-by.  It  made  one's  heart  ache  to 
think  that  while  those  poor  men  were  dying  of  thirst  they  could 


FROM  LAS  VEGAS  TO  SANTA  F£.          49 

see  below  them  the  windings  of  a  stream  of  cold,  clear  water, 
which  irrigated,  perhaps,  their  own  little  fields.  It  seemed  as  if 
we  would  never  get  away  from  the  doleful  mountain.  At  times 
I  thought  we  had  escaped  it,  in  the  windings  of  the  road,  but 
another  turn  brought  it  in  sight  again,  with  its  crosses,  eighteen 
hundred  years  ago  and  still  the  sign  of  voiceless  agony. 

Several  Mexican  villages  were  passed,  sleeping  in  the  sun,  one 
with  a  little  church,  a  mere  hut;  another,  San  Miguel,  with  a 
large  church  with  two  towers.  There  is  a  singular  absence  of 
life  or  stir  about  these  places.  One  could  easily  believe  them 
uninhabited.  The  men  were  at  work  plowing  in  the  fields;  the 
women  keep  indoors,  and  passing  by  one  may  often  see  them  sit- 
ting on  the  floor  in  a  circle,  like  Turkish  women,  conversing  on 
such  subjects  as  may  enter  their  Mexican  minds. 

All  the  road  was  interesting.  The  traveler  who  goes  no  farther 
into  the  country  than  Las  Vegas  will  lose  much.  The  scenery 
below  is  varied,  and  has  the  charm  of  novelty.  Whatever  form 
these  mountains  take,  they  are  unlike  any  others. 

One  objective  point  on  the  road  was  the  old  Pecos  church,  the 
subject  of  a  thousand  legends.  For  myself  I  am  no  antiquarian, 
and  have  no  special  theory  in  regard  to  the  past  of  New  Mexico. 
The  curious  in  such  matters  are  referred  to  the  essays  by  Major 
Inman  and  others.  I  only  tell  what  I  saw,  with  a  view  to  give 
an  idea  of  things  present,  for  the  benefit  of  future  tourists. 

Nothing  in  this  country  looks  as  I  anticipated.  I  had  formed 
the  impression  that  the  ruined  Pecos  church  rose  bare  and  gaunt 
from  the  midst  of  a  level  plain,  but  I  caught  my  first  sight  of  it 
through  the  vistas  of  a  pine  forest,  and  far  below  the  level  of  the 
track.  It  looked,  in  the  distance,  like  the  shell  of  a  burned 
brick  kiln. 

We  got  out  at  Levy,  a  station  consisting  of  the  little  depot  and 
the  agent's  cabin,  surrounded  by  tall  pines  which  gave  forth  a 
balsamic  odor.  A  red  road,  over  which  the  teamsters  haul  cedar 
posts  and  countless  railroad  ties  from  the  forest-covered  moun- 
tains, ran  down  into  the  valley.  We  followed  it,  and  soon  came 
into  old  fields  covered  with  scattered  dwarf  cedars.  The  fields 
looked  like  the  old  fields  of  the  South.  One  would  have  said, 


50  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

seeing  them  in  the  South,  that  cotton  had  grown  upon  them 
within  a  few  years.  We  kept  on,  crossing  two  or  three  deep 
ravines,  cut  in  the  red  soil;  then  toiled  through  the  dried,  sandy 
bed  of  an  extinct  river,  a  hundred  yards  wide,  and  saw  before  us 
the  former  site  of  the  Pueblo  of  the  P6cos. 

Imagine  a  great  spoon  lying  convex  side  up,  and  you  have  the 
ground  plan.  A  long  sandstone  ridge,  perhaps  seventy-five  feet 
above  the  general  level  of  the  plain  and  the  dead  river,  forms 
the  handle.  The  ridge  is  in  places  not  over  100  feet  wide  on 
top,  and  is  a  bare,  sun-bleached  rock.  Along  its  sides  great 
masses  of  stone  have  broken  off  and  fallen  down.  The  bowl  of 
the  spoon  forms  a  plateau  of  a  few  acres,  and  on  it  stand  the 
ruins  of  the  town  and  the  church,  the  ruins  beginning  where  the 
handle  joins  the  bowl.  Great  masses  of  small  stones  and  earth 
are  piled  up,  and  from  the  heaps  project  timbers.  The  houses 
were  two  and  perhaps  more  stories  high,  and  built  around  court- 
yards, as  in  the  present  day.  The  outlines  are  distinctly  visible. 
Here  and  there  are  circular  depressions  where  the  grass  shows 
green.  These  are  said  by  some  to  have  been  wells  or  cisterns; 
by  others,  council  houses. 

At  the  end  of  the  village  where  the  bowl  ( turned  over)  is  the 
highest  stand  the  ruins  of  the  church,  its  roofless  adobe  walls 
rising  in  places  to  the  height  of  thirty  feet.  It  is,  or  was,  a  Catholic 
church  of  the  most  approved  order.  Its  interior  is  cruciform. 
Here  is  the  chancel,  here  the  nave,  here  the  altar  recess,  here  the 
entrance  from  the  sacristy.  The  joists  projecting  from  the  wall 
show  rude  carving.  Where  was  the  altar  is  a  pile  of  earth. 
We  saw  an  excavation,  and  near  by  a  fragment  of  a  human 
skull.  Some  curiosity  seekers  had  dug  from  under  the  ruined 
altar  the  bones  of  the  priest  who  had  once  officiated  there,  and 
fragments  of  his  Franciscan  robe. 

This  was  the  ruin;  how  long  since  the  swarms  of  Indian  work- 
men raised  its  walls  is  not  and  may  never  be  exactly  known. 
The  town  was  an  old  one  when  the  Spanish  came  in  1536.  It  is 
one  of  the  places  connected  by  Indian  tradition  with  the  story 
of  Montezuma.  Abbe  Domenec's  story  being  taken  for  true  that 
the  Spaniards  had  possession  of  numerous  Indian  villages  in 


FROM  LAS  VEGAS  TO  SANTA  F£.          51 

1542,  this  church  may  have  been  built  then.  It  must  be  over 
two  hundred  years  old.  It  has  been  an  absolute  ruin  for  more 
than  fifty.  Its  preservation  in  its  present  shape  is  another  proof 
that  there  is  nothing  so  indestructible  as  simple  earth.  Masonry 
might  have  fallen;  the  natural  rock  all  around  has  crumbled;, 
but  these  earthen  walls,  five  feet  thick,  unless  destroyed  inten- 
tionally by  man  may  rear  their  sunburnt  front  in  the  lone  valley 
of  the  Pecos  for  a  thousand  years  to  come. 

Where  man  comes  and  goes  away  he  leaves  a  solitude  more 
desolate  than  he  found.  Around  the  valley  rose  the  mountains 
to  the  sky.  To  the  northward  the  high  peaks  were  wrapped  in 
clouds,  and  although  the  sun  of  May  was  shining,  the  snow  could 
be  seen  falling  on  those  cold  and  distant  heights.  Sweeping 
around  almost  in  a  semi-circle  was  the  great  mountain  wall  1 
have  before  mentioned,  closing  in  on  the  east  and  south;  to  the 
west  rose  gentle  slopes,  dark  with  the  forest.  It  was  a  lovely  yet 
lonely  spot.  The  vagrant  wind  waved  the  long  grass  that  grew 
from  the  ruins;  a  great  cactus  spread  its  skeleton  fingers;  a  sol- 
itary crow,  balancing  on  uneven  wing,  endeavored  to  beat  up 
against  the  wind. 

Here  was  solitude.  The  Indian,  the  Spaniard,  and  thousands 
of  later  visitors  had  been  here  and  left  their  names  and  gone. 
Upon  the  mountain-side  could  be  seen  a  little  white  cloud  of 
moving  vapor  from  a  locomotive,  but  with  a  hurried  echo  linger- 
ing behind  it,  this  latest  invader  came  and  went.  And  yet  where 
we  sat  and  watched  the  hurrying  clouds  cast  their  vanishing 
shadows  upon  the  mountain-side  and  plain,  hundreds  and  thou- 
sands of  human  beings  had  been  born  and  lived,  laughed  and  wept, 
and  hoped  and  loved,  and  despaired  and  died.  Feeling  secure, 
doubtless,  on  their  ridge  in  the  midst  of  the  valley,  the  Indians 
had  cultivated  their  fields,  perhaps  thousands  of  acres,  along  the 
banks  of  the  Pecos  half  a  mile  away,  and,  as  I  believe,  along  the 
shores  of  the  stream  now  dried  up  which  ran  beneath  their  walls. 
From  their  town  they  went  forth  in  the  morning;  to  it  they 
returned  at  eve.  According  to  tradition,  so  industrious  were 
they  that  they  collected  provision  for  two  or  three  years  in  ad- 
vance. They  had  chosen  a  noble  site;  these  mountains  seemed 


52  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

a  shelter  for  them  —  a  barrier  against  their  foes.  They  proved 
neither.  The  new  god,  whose  temple  they  reared,  in  time  seemed 
as  powerless  as  the  old.  The  fields  are  now  wastes ;  the  town  is 
a  heap  of  stones  and  earth;  and  the  roofless  church  is  a  monu- 
ment of  desolation.  Thousands  pass  it  by,  but  none  remain. 
The  strongest  and  the  wisest  must  possess  the  earth.  Coronado 
passed  by  the  spot  in  1542,  on  his  long  and  fruitless  march. 
What  a  savage  wilderness  lay  between  him  and  the  sounding 
Atlantic !  Seventy-eight  years  after,  a  band  of  shivering  Eng- 
lish emigrants  stood  under  the  bleak  December  sky  and  con- 
fronted Frenchman  and  Spaniard  and  Indian.  From  that  hour 
the  idea  of  a  great  American-European  Catholic  Empire  in 
America  was  made  impossible.  To-day  this  ruined  church  is  an 
emblem  and  evidence  of  that  lost  dream.  This  railroad,  built 
by  the  lineal  descendants  of  those  very  Puritan  exiles,  is  the 
sign  and  symbol  of  the  future.  The  Spaniard  brought  ruin; 
the  descendants  of  the  Englishman  of  the  Seventeenth  century 
will  bring  restoration.  The  Indians  cannot  come  back;  the  fire 
of  Montezuma  which  they  are  said  to  have  kept  burning  amid 
the  ruins  of  Pecos  has  gone  out  forever;  but  as  we  passed  we 
saw  that  the  Mexican  farmer  had  discarded  the  wooden  plow, 
and  was  turning  over  the  soil  with  the  bright  share  of  the  Amer- 
ican. The  mines  opened  by  the  Spaniards  were  filled  up,  but 
a  few  hundred  yards  from  the  little  station  of  Levy,  Americans 
were  sinking  a  shaft,  not  for  gold  or  silver  this  time,  but  for  use- 
ful copper.  All  that  was  good  will  come  back,  increased  an 
hundred  fold. 

It  is  very  difficult,  I  may  say,  to  gain  accurate  information  in 
regard  to  distances,  etc.,  in  this  country.  The  Mexican  does  not 
understand  you ;  the  American,  in  many  instances,  does  not  know 
or  does  not  care.  We  had  been  given  the  distance  of  the  ruin 
from  the  station  by  half  a  dozen  persons,  as  varying  from  half  a 
mile  to  three  miles.  A  note  of  our  expedition  may  help  future 
visitors. 

We  left  Las  Vegas  on  the  way  freight  at  about  nine  o'clock ; 
we  arrived  at  Levy  at  half-past  one;  we  visited  the  ruin  and  re- 
turned to  the  station  in  time  for  the  passenger  train  bound  south, 


FROM  LAS  VEGAS  TO  SANTA  F£.          53 

at  half-past  four.     The  distance  to  the  church  may  be  safely 
called  one  mile  and  a  half. 

The  road  presents  no  difficulties  that  a  good  walker,  lady  or 
gentleman,  cannot  surmount.  We  took  dinner  with  the  train- 
men at  Fulton.  Visitors  can  supply  themselves  with  lunch  at 
Las  Vegas.  No  traveler  from  the  North  should  fail  to  visit  the 
church.  The  history  of  this  old  country  must  be  gathered  in 
chapters;  by  degrees,  as  it  were,  and  this  old  ruin  is  a  strange 
leaf  in  the  book  of  time. 

The  afternoon  sun  was  declining  when  the  passenger  train  came 
along,  and  we  resumed  our  journey.  We  passed  Glorieta,  and 
the  wild  walls  of  the  Apache  canon,  and,  changing  cars  at  Lamy 
Junction,  turned  again  to  the  northward.  In  the  slant  sun  to  the 
westward  we  saw  new  mountains;  true  mountains  in  their  out- 
line, in  color  and  form,  such  as  we  see  in  great  pictures,  and  in 
dreams,  "the  purple  peaks,  that  tear  the  drifting  clouds  of  gold." 
They  rose  from  the  plains,  a  group  by  themselves,  beautiful  and 
alone.  Looking  at  them,  we  forgot  all  else,  and  started  with 
surprise  when  the  brakemau  called  "  Santa  Fe!" 
4 


HOURS  IN  SANTA  FE. 


WITH  the  exception  of  Savannah,yith  its  shady  streets  of  greeo 
and  gloom,  its  old  houses  with  iron-barred  lower  windows ;  its 
Spanish  and  Huguenot  names,  I  have  never  seen  an  American 
city  which  so  impressed  and  won  me  as  Santa  Fe.  Between  the 
two  cities  there  is  scarcely  a  point  of  resemblance.  One  is  al- 
most on  a  level  with  the  sea,  the  other  is  7,000  feet  above  it; 
one  is  surrounded  by  low  pine  woods  and  rice  swamps  and  reedy 
marshes,  the  other  looks  from  the  lap  of  mountains  which  rise 
to  the  realms  of  sterility  and  snow.  In  fact  they  have  nothing 
in  common,  save  that  both  remind  one  of  Spain,  and  both  are 
very  old. 

In  traveling  usually  one  soon^wearies  of  a  place  and  longs  to 
hurry  on  to  another,  but  I  find  myself  lingering  here  and  reluc- 
tant to  go.  I  discover  that  I  am  more  than  usually  reluctant  to 
do  anything  "on  time,"  and  disposed  to  lounge  around  the  plaza 
or  walk  about  the  narrow  streets  and  talk  to  the  Kansas  fellows 
who  live  here,  and  who  seem  coming  into  town  as  if  to  a  meeting 
of  the  Republican  Central  Committee  or  State  Convention.  The 
first  evening  of  my  arrival,  I  met  Prof.  George  F.  Gaumer,  whom 
I  had  known  as  a  student  in  the  University  at  Lawrence,  who 
has  since  traveled  all  over  Cuba  and  Yucatan  as  a  naturalist, 
and  is  now  living  here  with  his  pretty  Kansas  wife,  teaching 
Spanish,  (how  is  that  for  Kansas?)  and  acting  as  professor  in 
the  University  of  New  Mexico.  Then  there  is  Ed.  L.  Bartlett, 
formerly  of  Wyandotte,  and  Mrs.  Bartlett,  the  society  of  either, 
to  say  nothing  of  both,  being  sufficient  to  induce  a  Kansas  man 
to  stay  in  Santa  Fe  a  year;  and  last,  but  not  least  by  any  means, 
is  my  rotund  old  friend,  of  all  my  years  in  Kansas,  Father  Def- 
ouri,  now  the  Padre  of  the  Church  of  Our  Lady  of  Guadaloupe, 
an  edifice  which  he  is  overhauling  in  a  manner  calculated  to 
astonish  the  bones  of  the  ancient  Mexicans  buried  under  and 

(54) 


HOURS   IN   SANTA    F£.  55 

around  it.  Going  along  the  plaza  I  met,  day  before  yesterday, 
Gov.  Harvey,  "bearded  like  the  pard,"  just  in  from  his  survey- 
ing labors.  The  first  morning  of  ray  stay  Dr.  Seibor,  formerly 
of  Ellsworth,  drove  up,  and  yesterday  I  rode  out  with  him  to 
the  Indian  village  of  Tesuque. 

In  Kansas  by  this  time  it  must  be  warming  up,  but  here  there 
is  the  sun  of  May  with  a  darker  blue  in  the  cloudless  sky  than 
I  have  noticed  elsewhere,  and  yet  there  is  snow  on  the  mountains 
and  a  touch  of  early  winter  or  late  fall  in  the  air.  They  say  it 
never  goes  above  85°  in  the  summer.  The  cottonwoods  and  the 
alfalfa  in  the  little  plaza  are  bright  and  green,  but  the  irrigated 
gardens,  shut  in  by  breast-high  adobe  walls,  are  hardly  begin- 
ning to  show  color.  And,  speaking  of  the  plaza,  brings  me 
back  to  Kansas  or  Kansans  again.  The  soldiers'  monument  in 
the  center  of  the  plaza,  which  commemorates  the  valor  of  the 
heroes  of  New  Mexico  who  fought  Indians  and  those  whom  the 
monument  in  uncompromising  language  on  unyielding  marble 
calls  "  rebels,"  was  erected  at  the  instance  of  Gen.  Bob  Mitchell, 
of  Kansas,  who,  poor  fellow,  passed  the  other  day,  amid  the 
shadows  of  poverty,  to  his  grave.  In  front  of  a  store  facing  the 
plaza,  Richard  Weightmau,  once  a  familiar  figure  in  Atchison, 
stabbed  and  killed,  in  self-defense,  Felix  Aubrey,  the  famous 
rider  ;  and  in  the  Exchange  Hotel,  at  a  corner  of  the  plaza,  Col. 
John  P.  Slough  was  murdered.  Both  Weightman  and  Slough 
are  very  kindly  spoken  of  here  by  men  who  knew  them  inti- 
mately. In  the  old  "Palace"  on  the  plaza,  W.  F.  M.  Arny 
served  five  years  as  Secretary  of  the  Territory,  and  Capt.  John 
Pratt  a  still  longer  time  as  United  States  Marshal.  A  Kansas 
man  ought  to  feel  at  home  here. 

To  get  down  to  a  semblance  of  business,  Santa  Fe  is  a  town 
of  nine  thousand  inhabitants,  of  whom  two-thirds  are  natives. 
It  claims  to  be  the  oldest  town  in  the  United  States,  but  nothing 
can  be  told  of  its  age  by  its  appearance.  An  adobe  house  takes 
"no  note  of  time."  It  looks  as  old  in  a  week  as  it  will  after 
ten  thousand  years  of  existence.  For  all  one  can  see,  Santa  Fe 
may  have  been  built  ten  years  ago,  or  Adam  may  have  irrigated 
the  Garden  of  Eden  from  the  little  Rio  Santa  Fe.  There  is  no 


56  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

mistake,  however,  about  its  being  very  old.  Mr.  Ellison,  the 
old  Acting  Territorial  Librarian,  "has  the  papers"  on  that. 
There  was,  from  the  dawn  of  time,  an  Indian  village  here,  and 
"the  Santa  Fe  Town  Company,"  as  I  presume  it  was  called, 
began  operations  in  1597.  Archbishop  Lamy,  who  has  known 
the  town  since  1850,  says  it  changes  very  little  in  its  general  ap- 
pearance. It  was  a  town  of  five  thousand  inhabitants  at  the  time 
of  the  American  occupation,  and  what  has  been  done  since,  until 
the  railroad  came,  has  been  done  on  the  old  plan.  The  United 
States  Government  in  its  buildings  adopted  the  adobe,  and 
Americans  generally  did  the  same.  Even  now,  in  the  construc- 
tion of  brick  residences,  the  old  one-story,  roomy  house,  with  its 
placita,  or  court,  is  followed  as  a  model.  The  Exchange  Hotel, 
where  this  letter  is  written,  is  one  of  the  large  hotels  of  the 
town,  and  it  is  but  an  extension  of  an  old  Mexican  house,  a  one- 
story  adobe,  with  two  little  court-yards,  into  which  the  sun 
shines  without  let  or  hindrance;  a  rambling,  irregular,  curious 
old  place,  with  big  bed-rooms,  each  with  a  back  door  and  a  front, 
opening  into  the  placita  and  the  street,  and  no  ceiling  overhead  — 
just  the  bare  joists.  A  queer  and  comfortable  place,  better  a 
thousand  times,  to  my  taste  at  least,  than  a  box  and  bell-cord  in 
the  sixth  story  of  an  American  hotel. 

The  town  is  an  aggregate  of  such  houses,  and  smaller  ones, 
with  some  modern  brick  and  frame  houses  already  built,  and 
others  coming.  The  first  royal  Governor,  the  Hon.  Pedro  de  Pe- 
ralta,  appears  to  have  said  in  first  arranging  the  town,  "Here  we 
will  have  a  little  square  plaza,  and  on  this  side  of  it  the  Gover- 
nor's palace  shall  be  built,  and  around  it  we  will  have  business 
houses;  and  for  the  rest,  you  can  build  where  you  like,  only  do 
not  take  up  too  much  room  with  your  streets."  Then  the  inhab- 
itants went  to  work,  with  a  spider  web  for  a  model,  and  located 
streets  and  alleys,  and  built  long  lines  of  adobe  houses  on  each 
side,  with  originally  no  windows  on  the  street  side,  and  with  but 
a  large  gate  opening  from  the  street  into  the  placita.  On  the 
street  front  they  erected  porches  running  from  house  to  house, 
for  hundreds  of  feet,  so  that  in  Santa  Fe  you  may  walk  long 
distances  without  stepping  into  the  sun,  or  the  rain  —  when  it 


HOURS    IN   SANTA    F£.  57 

falls.  The  Rio  Santa  Fe,  a  little  stream  from  the  mountains, 
runs  through  a  wide  rocky  bed  in  the  midst  of  the  town,  separat- 
ing it  into  two  portions;  and  on  this  stream  the  women  of  both 
towns  met  and  discussed  the  hired-girl  question,  and  washed  their 
clothes. 

This  is  a  rough  outline  of  what  appears  to  be  the  general  plan 
of  Santa  Fe.  Going  up  on  the  hill  which  overlooks  the  town, 
you  may,  from  the  earthwork  called  Fort  Marcy,  see  all  over 
Santa  Fe  as  it  is  now,  and  in  your  mind  you  can  reconstruct  it 
as  it  was.  You  see  large  squares  which  look  like  dried-up  ponds: 
they  are  the  flat  roofs  of  the  adobe  houses.  This  flat  surface  was 
originally  broken  only  by  occasional  trees  and  the  higher  walls 
of  the  churches. 

The  Spaniards,  on  their  occupation  of  a  country,  build  at 
once  a  fort  and  a  church.  Santa  Fe  has,  consequently,  some 
very  old  churches  which  are  the  first  objects  of  interest  visited 
by  strangers.  The  oldest  of  these  is  San  Miguel,  St.  Michael 
being  greatly  venerated  in  these  parts.  The  original  church  was 
built,  no  one  knows  exactly  when,  but  it  is  said  in  1640.  The 
Pueblo  Indians  destroyed  it  in  the  revolt  of  1680,  and  it  was  re- 
built in  1710.  On  a  beam  under  the  gallery  it  is  stated  that  it 
was  built  by  the  Marquis  de  Penuela.  His  whole  name  was 
"The  Admiral  Don  Jose  Chacon  Medina  Salazar  Villasenor, 
Knight  of  the  Order  of  Santiago,  Governor  and  Captain  General 
of  this  Kingdom  of  New  Mexico;"  but  he  did  not  sign  his  name 
in  full  because  there  was  not  room  enough  on  the  beam.  San 
Miguel  on  the  outside  looks  like  an  immense  and  badly  con- 
structed sod-house.  The  inside  is  long,  narrow  and  high,  with  a 
little  gallery  supported  by  a  cross-beam  and  the  great  name  of 
the  Marquis  de  Penuela.  There  are  a  number  of  pictures,  age 
unknown  —  perhaps  painted  in  Spain,  perhaps  in  old  Mexico. 
They  are  very  ugly,  as  is  San  Miguel  itself.  What  is  true  of  San 
Miguel  is  true  of  San  Francisco.  This  church  is  at  present  cu- 
riously situated.  The  great  stone  church,  which  has  been  four- 
teen years  in  building,  completely  incloses  it,  and  shuts  out  the 
sun  in  a  great  degree,  causing  some  of  the  strangest  effects  of 
light  and  shadow  imaginable.  Through  the  open  doors  comes  a 


58  SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 

bit  of  bright  sunshine;  daylight  from  some  source  falls  on  the 
high  altar;  between  them  is  dim  shadow,  made  more  strange  and 
ghastly  by  the  Mexican  women,  closely  covered  by  their  black 
shawls,  who  kneel  in  silence  before  a  little  altar  in  an  alcove. 

The  most  interesting  church  to  me  was  that  of  Our  Lady  of 
Guadaloupe.  This  church  has  been  turned  over  to  the  Rev. 
James  H.  Defouri,  formerly  of  Kansas,  for  the  use  of  the  English* 
speaking  Catholics  of  Santa  Fe.  It  is  probably  nearly  as  old  as 
San  Francisco;  but  what  a  change,  my  countrymen!  Father 
Defouri  found  the  church,  like  all  old  churches,  without  seats  or 
a  fire.  He  has  introduced  pews  and  a  stove.  I  understand  that 
the  latter  was  considered  a  frightful  innovation,  the  faithful  hav- 
ing relied  for  ages  on  their  piety  to  keep  them  warm,  but  the 
pews  were  a  distinguished  success.  On  the  first  Sunday  they 
were  opened  to  the  public  they  were  filled  with  natives,  delighted 
to  worship  in  comfort.  A  Kansas  man  may  be  considered  the 
reformer  of  New-Mexican  church  interiors.  Many  tourists  will 
doubtless  feel  shocked  by  the  lack  of  reverence  for  the  antique 
shown  in  putting  a  new  roof  on  this  church;  it  may  be  a  comfort 
to  such  to  know  that  on  the  other  hand  to  Father  Defouri  is  due 
the  preservation  of  the  remarkable  altar-piece,  perhaps  the  finest 
specimen  of  Spanish-American  art  in  New  Mexico.  It  was 
painted  in  Mexico  by  Josephus  Alzibar,  in  1683,  and  on  account 
of  its  size  was  brought  to  Santa  Fe  in  three  pieces.  It  portrays 
in  four  tableaux  the  old  Mexican  legend  of  Juan,  the  Pueblo,  to 
whom  the  Virgin  appeared  thrice,  and  left  as  a  proof  of  the 
reality  of  her  visit  her  full-length  portrait  on  his  mantle.  Show- 
ing this  to  the  Bishop,  who  had  been  before  incredulous,  a  church 
of  Our  Lady  of  Guadaloupe  was  erected  on  the  spot  designated 
by  her  in  her  first  meeting  with  the  Indian.  The  three  figures  at 
the  top  of  the  picture,  representing  the  Trinity,  are  beautifully 
drawn;  and  the  whole  design  is  spirited.  This  picture  was  being 
destroyed  by  leaking  rain,  and  its  base  was  nearly  hidden  by  a 
pile  of  dirt.  It  has  now  been  inclosed  in  a  frame,  and  is  to  be 
more  perfectly  restored.  Kansas  people  will  not  fail  to  visit  the 
Guadaloupe  church,  to  see  the  painting  and  listen  to  the  expla- 
nation by  their  former  fellow-citizen.  In  the  sacristy  was  pru- 


HOURS   IN   SANTA    F£.  59 

dently  concealed  a  hideous  picture  taken  from  the'churcb,  and 
the  worthy  Father  was  kind  enough  not  to  dispute  the  writer's 
expressed  belief  that  the  artist  is  now  in  purgatory. 

There  are  other  churches,  but  those  mentioned  are  the  most 
interesting. 

In  another  letter,  other  points  of  interest  will  be  mentioned. 
This  letter  is  addressed  confidentially  to  Kansaus  at  home,  to  tell 
them  the  "lay  of  the  land."  They  should  visit  Santa  Fe,  if 
they  propose  to  do  so,  at  once.  They  will  find  friends  here  in  the 
shape  of  former  acquaintances,  and  will  make  more  after  they 
get  here.  In  particular,  they  will  meet  a  pleasant  welcome  from 
Governor  Sheldon,  to  whom  the  writer  is  indebted  for  many 
courtesies.  They  will  find  now  many  things  which  a  few  years 
later  will  have  disappeared.  It  is  but  forty-eight  hours'  ride 
from  Atchison  to  Santa  Fe,  and  in  that  distance  you  seem  to  have 
passed  from  one  world  to  another.  Leaving  things  modern  and 
familiar,  you  can  be  surrounded  here  by  strange  faces,  strange 
houses,  strange  churches,  and  all  around  a  frame  of  mountains 
as  charming  as  the  Delectable  Mountains  which  rose  before  the 
delighted  vision  of  Bunyan's  Pilgrim.  And  so,  umore  anon." 


SOMETHING  MORE  ABOUT  SANTA  FE. 


SANTA  FE  is  the  historical  center  of  New  Mexico,  and  its  civil, 
ecclesiastical  and  military  capital.  The  seat  of  the  first  is,  as  it 
has  been  for  two  hundred  years  continuously,  the  long  adobe 
building  which  forms  one  side  of  the  plaza,  and  which  is  the 
only  building  in  the  United  States  called,  of  right,  a  "palace." 
Gov.  Lionel  A.  Sheldon  sits  literally  in  the  place  of  the  royal 
governors,  and  the  Mexican  Republican  Governors  and  political 
chiefs  who  have  ruled  in  all  sorts  of  fashions  this  queer  old 
country.  He  wears  the  mantle  of  the  brave  Otermin,  the  lofty 
Marquis  de  Penuela,  he  of  the  many  titles;  of  the  unfortunate 
Perez,  of  Margales,  last  of  the  Spanish  rulers,  and  so  on  down. 
The  palace  is  a  long,  low,  shadowy  building,  with  a  wide  porch, 
and  if  all  the  varied  characters  who  for  two  centuries  or  more 
have  walked  under  that  porch  and  have  entered  those  deep-set 
doors,  could  at  one  time  "revisit  the  glimpses  of  the  moon"  for 
the  benefit  of  the  present  incumbent,  he  could  a  tale  unfold  more 
wonderful  than  Hamlet,  or  Macbeth,  or  the  guilty  Richard. 
Proud  Grandee  of  Spain,  from  the  streets  of  Seville  or  the  banks 
of  the  Guadalquiver;  long-robed  Franciscan;  fierce  and  wily  In- 
dian ;  aspiring  Mexican  chieftain ;  American  soldier ;  Kit  Carson, 
and  all  the  famous  men  of  the  plain  and  mountain,  have  walked 
under  the  portal  of  the  old  palace.  In  one  room,  piled  in  dusty 
heaps,  breast  high,  are  papers  and  parchments  which  may  yet 
prove  a  mine  more  precious  than  gold  to  the  patient  historian. 
Beginning  with  the  story  of  the  re-conquest  of  the  country,  by 
Diego  del  Vargas,  written  in  1693,  these  papers  cover  all  of  life 
in  New  Mexico  until  the  day  when  a  new  and  strange  flag  waved 
above  the  Palace,  and  Governors  speaking  a  new  language 
reigned  within  its  walls.  Somewhere  in  these  heaps  is  a  paper  of 
great  interest  to  the  writer.  It  is  a  detailed  statement  of  the 
expenses  incurred  in  the  arrest  and  detention  of  Captain  Zebulon 

(60) 


SOMETHING    MORE    ABOUT   SANTA    FJ&.  61 

M.  Pike,  a  hero  whose  Dame  and  fame  there  is  an  humble  effort 
to  preserve  in  the  sketch,  "Pike,  of  Pike's  Peak."  The  custo- 
dian of  the  archives  is  Mr.  Ellison,  the  Territorial  Librarian, 
who  looks  nearly  as  old  as  his  charge. 

While  no  adequate  appropriation  has  ever  been  made  to  have 
the  papers  arranged,  classified  and  preserved,  Mr.  Ellison  has 
regarded  their  care  as  a  labor  of  love.  During  eight  months 
that  he  was  a  sufferer  from  a  broken  limb,  he  solaced  with  these 
old  documents  the  weary  hours.  He  showed  me  some  of  the 
oldest  records.  They  are  on  fine  Italian  paper,  the  writing 
covering  only  the  right  half  of  the  page,  leaving  room  for  re- 
marks and  annotations.  The  handwriting  is  clear  and  the  ink 
scarcely  faded.  Those  old  Spaniards  did  some  things  very  well. 
It  is  noticeable  that  the  older  the  records  the  more  care  is  dis- 
played in  their  preparation. 

A  thoughtful  person  seeing  these  papers  longs  to  penetrate  the 
mysteries  of  the  early  history  of  New  Mexico,  but  really  very 
little  has  been  drawn  from  this  source.  Judge  Rich,  who  is  to 
New  Mexico  what  Judge  Frank  Adams  is  to  Kansas,  has  col- 
lected many  books  on  the  history  of  Mexico  and  New  Mexico, 
but  there  is  nothing  which  can  be  called  a  history  of  the  latter. 
Of  the  modern  books,  "  El  Gringo,"  by  a  Pennsylvanian  named 
Davis,  who  was  Attorney  General  of  the  Territory  twenty-five 
years  ago,  is  as  good  as  any.  Davis  appears  to  have  been  a  one- 
horse  politician,  entirely  destitute  of  imagination,  quite  com- 
monplace, and  troubled  with  a  clumsy  and  elephantine  humor ; 
but  his  story  is  a  straight  one,  and  has  the  merit  of  brevity. 

The  history  of  New  Mexico  will  be  found  an  uneventful  one. 
From  the  days  of  the  Spanish  conquest  but  two  serious  revolu- 
tions have  occurred,  that  of  1680,  when  the  Spaniards  were 
driven  out  by  the  Indians,  and  that  of  1837,  when  Gov.  Perez 
was  murdered.  The  Indians  had  been  nominally  Christianized 
in  1837,  and  yet  behaved  with  more  ferocity  than  in  1680.  An 
attempt  at  insurrection  against  the  United  States,  shortly  after 
the  occupation  by  the  Americans,  was  easily  suppressed  by  Col. 
Price,  afterwards  Gen.  Sterling  Price,  of  the  Confederate  army. 

The  truth  is,  New  Mexico  was  until  recently  a  far-away  coun- 


02  SOUTIIWKSTKUN     LKITKKS. 

l.ry.  Shut  in  by  mountains  or  immense  plains,  i|,  was  a  land 
apart  The  Mexican  revolution,  which  lor  ten  years  preceding 
IS'.'O  delii-ed  Old  Mexico  with  blood,  was  scarcely  heard  ol'  in 
Ne\v  Mexico,  and  the  country  submitted  to  the  Americans  with 
hardly  a  show  ol  K  i  lance.  Whether  it  was  Spanish  (iovernor 
(jeueral,  Mexican  political  cliiel,  or  American  (  Joyernor  ap 
pointed  at  Washington,  Santa.  I'V  has  always  been  the  capital, 
and  all  the  varym;-  forms  of  sovereignty  have  been  accepted 
with  about  e(|iial  resignation.  The  vigorous  and  arbitrary  rule 
ol'  the  Spanish  is,  however,  best,  remembered,  and  occasionally 
(iov.  Sheldon  is  appealed  to  by  some  simple  Mexican  in  a  way 
(hat  indicates  bebel'  in  his  absolute  power  to  do  what  he  likes 
a  liuiferin^  relic  ol  the  elleet  ot'  old  time  I'ule. 

Santa     I'V    is    the    capital    of    a     province    not     limited    by    the 
boundaries  ol    New  Mexico,  hut  embracing  Colorado  and  a.  vast 
stretch  of  mountain  country,  and    the    head  of  that    '-Teat  spirit 
nal    empire    is    the  Archbishop  <d'  Santa  I'V.       His  lace   is    reco;- 
ni/cd  and  In  ;  authority  exercised  over  a  larj-cr  rej-Mon,  probably, 
than    owns   the   sway    ol    any  oilier    Archbishop    in    the   ('atholic 
church;    and    in    town   or   country,   in    civili/.ed    city   or    Indian 
pueblo,  from    Oregon    to  the  boundary  ol    Mexico,  all    aloiu-;    the 
l)ackbone  of  I  he  continent,  the   bt^st-known    name   is   that    of  the 

Rt.  Rev.  John  B.  Lamy.    Civil  Governors  oome  and  go,  but 

(In  tall,  slender,  elderly  Franco  American  remains  with  un- 
chaiiLMn^  and  unbroken  power.  I'ndcr  his  rule  and  through 
his  energy  Santa  I'V  is  becoming  one  ol  (he  j*;rcat  seats  ol 
(1atholic  education  and  influence,  with  a  cathedral,  a  hospital 
and  schools,  all  projected  on  a  scale  which  may  be  termed  vast, 
and  which  will  preserve  his  name  for  unknown  time  to  come. 

The  llishop's  (Jardcn  is  one  of  ihe  sijdils  of  Santa,  I'V.  (<om- 
in;'  early  into  possession  of  a  plat  of  ground  containing  Ji  spring 
sullicienl  to  irrigate  the  whole  city  of  Santa  l(\'-.  lie  has  created 
such  a  spot  of  j'Tccnery  as  must  surprise  the  barren  mountain- 
peaks  which  look  down  upon  it.  Within  thai  lii:;h  adobe  wall 
^rows  every  fruit  tree  which  will  exist  in  the  climate  and  alii 
tude.  and  although  the  Archbishop  has  passed  nearly  all  his  life 
in  this  country,  there  is  a  reminiscence  of  K ranee  in  the  formal 


SOMI/I  INN..    Mom     \  I-..H   i       \\i\ii  li  : 

lilllr  ."Midrn  \\ln.li  i.  di  .1  mcl  i  vcly  In.",  own,  \villi  its  |>CMIM  Mini 
;;IM|M  I  I  Mllird  M- Mill  ,!  I  1  ir \\  it  I  I  ,  M  \  '•  •  1 1  ..•••(In-Ill  III  Nnllinmdy 
I  I  WM  .  in  III  is  III  Mr  ,",Mldcn,  wnlLiii;'.  In  Mini  I'm  with  In  In- 
inlii'.  h.'illd,  thill  Mir  \\riln  :..i  u  |hr  fliniiUlH  \  n  h  In  ln>|>  M|'  I  hr 
Moillll.'lill:!  In  r  Ihr  li  I  ;|  ,  |  >..  .1 1 » I  y  I',  ,  i  Mi.-  hlsl,  lillir  Tin  •  \|,h 
hi:. hop',  liniisr  i,  Ixnll  nl'lor  I  hr  MrxirMH  I'M:. limn,  il  i>/,tn(,i 
npriiiiii;  dii'-i'llv  nil  (lie  ..Irccl.  Ill  llir  rrnlrr  <>l  llir  HTM!  lillir 
cnllll  \v:i..  Inlind  :>  I'llllllnill,  Mlhl  I  \V()  ln'IMllllnl  lillir  <  hi  l(  I  I'CII , 
willi  :i  M^xn'iiii  inn  .  -nl,  wrrr  pliiyiii^  nl».»iil  I'm  ih,-  itptirl.- 
IIKMllH,  cxcrpl  II  lr\v  nrni|»ir«|  l>\  lln-  A  i  .  li  I  »i  li- .|  >,  .in  rented, 
Tlir  «lom  ;  :in<l  lln-  rc.'ul.'ii  rnli.uxr  |.»|lic  .'MMl-ii  wrrr  r.»nn<l 
<  |o.<<|,  hill,  nlir  nl  the  lillir  ;  •.  1 1  I  .  \\cnl  lodillin;-  .ind  |>i.illlin  • 
llhollt,  in  i  Ini;-  Mini  li«-  knr\v  MH-  m:nl,  MIH!  ..»  l>\  ;i  (ircinlnu. 
Mild  (orl)idd(MI  |Hll  II  \\r  '-ill  i  l  r<  I  I  hr  ;•  i  mind  :  Wnlnilcird  M|MI|||, 
11(1  Illl  I  III;'  Mir  1 1.  1 1  id.  \villi  Mi'  i  i  in  yi  i  id  of  1 1  :(),  Mir  |»||ll,".,  Mir 
Wllltc  III  '  .'  Miird  .1  r;i  \\l>ri  i  MM,  .1  <i.|  r  \  ri  y  drl  Mil  <d  I  IP  III  Mr  I'M  I'll, 

when  wo  Huddcnly  CMIIH-  I'M<  T  In  I'jirr  uil  h  I  hr  n\\  nn  .>!  Mir  ••_•  .Mind  . 
wlm  hud  evidently  llmu.dil.  Ih-il.  hr  h;id  ..rrnnly  lm|  mil  Mi. 
world.  Tin-  ii'i:iliMii  mln  \vlnrli  nut  little  V(dnnleei  ;-uid.  I,  id 

Ird     IIM     \VM    ,     Inr    n.     iiii.in.nl,    rml>Mi  i   i      in;-,    Inil      Mir     A  I  r  MM    In  >|  > 
snnii       r<  cnvrrrd      iVnlll       Ills       ,lll|»ll  :r,      :ind       ||r<ilrd      ill      \\llli      In.". 
MC<  ll:t|  (HIH'd    |K)I||  rnr        ;     Mild    I  IIM    lull    II,"  H  I  r ,    li  I   :    Illir    i    y .    ;    ;i  nd    rnlll 
limndlli"    jr.-il  in  r  ,    .n-nird    ll  |»|>rn|H  -iiilrl  y    llMllird    in    |)ir    Ini   -III       in 
I'nuiidnif  '        I  In  showed   n.  In,  jiMilnr,   with  ll   lilld  <'H  I' V('d    nuiihlr 
inillltcl     IHMilr    by   il.    lUltivr     Nru    Mr\  icilll,  Ulld     |>nlnir<      ind     (Mil 
hrnidri  ir  ;ip    I  hr    wnl  I.    «.(     |.ll|nl    ,    III     III          .    llo.d   .  Mr    .        |  J   im.  d     I  h.ll 

niirr    hr     hvrd     Im      ninnlli,     in     Simla,      I'Y-     without.       r,ii,;.     ;1     |,,| 
«  ii-ii   visilor,  hut    now,  with    Mir  ndvrnl   nl'  ihr  riiilmnd,  InnidredM 

nl       r  \  ri||      loin     I          y  I     I  I  r<|       |hr       ;-|Mi|iid     ,     Mild,      hr       1 1 1  I  1 1 1 1  >|  |  rd  ,     In; 

I    .  ,ninr  wdiM  I.  nil     hi.:    Ilinr   ntld     jMllirnrr.        <.«»iii"    ntll    mln    lh< 

roiirt,    we    lonnd    Mir    lil.tln    Miillim     .,1     mn     lr..nldr-.    in    .nni|,iiny 

with  hri    younger  sistrr,  i:idnuit  with    linnn|»h  ovrr   hrr    Mrhirvr 

IIU'lil.      Ill        hnwill;-       MM      MM        ."inlllid  She     Wll."-     '.ni;di|       ll)»      Mild 

"oiindly    I   i     ,rd    I'nr   hrr    wirkrdn< 

Hll.lll.ll.  !'<'  i ;:,  l»"  ,idr  ||.-.  riyd  Mild  rr<  Ir  i;i  hr.d  :ii|>irni  i.  y.  Mir 
militury  hr.id«|ii:n  Iri .-,  nl'  I.I  in  district.,  IIM  i  I.  \v.i  :  in  I  h.  ,dd  Spnnish 
Innr  Thn  (  in  vri  innrii  I  IIM.'.  rr  :ri  vrd  .-.rvrinl  KJIIIIICM  which  nrr 


64  SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 

inclosed  in  high  walls  and  covered  with  one-story  adobe  bar- 
racks, and  the  neat  residences  of  the  officers.  The  garrison  band 
usually  plays  in  the  little  shaded  plaza  three  times  a  week,  and 
is  one  of  the  attractions  of  the  town.  At  the  time  of  our  visit 
the  troops  had  gone  in  search  of  Indians,  and  the  parade  and 
barracks  seemed  quite  forlorn. 

There  was  a  town  before  Santa  Fe  was  founded,  and  no  one 
may  know  how  old  it  was,  and  there  still  exists,  six  miles  from 
Santa  Fe,  the  pueblo  of  Tesuque,  in  form  and  construction  ex- 
actly the  same  as  it  was  in  the  days  of  Cortez.  I  rode  out  to  it 
in  company  with  Dr.  Seibor,  formerly  of  Ellsworth,  who  had 
never  visited  it  before,  and  consequently  our  inspection  was  not 
as  thorough  and  intelligent  as  it  might  have  been,  though  very 
pleasant.  The  road  runs  over  a  high  ridge,  and  for  much  of  the 
distance  in  the  bed  of  a  long,  dried-up  river.  The  scene  was 
thoroughly  New-Mexican.  The  sun-burnt  road,  the  thousands 
of  yellow,  sun-blistered  and  serried  ridges,  covered  with  a  thin 
growth  of  cedars  and  piiion,  and  the  groups  of  burros  loaded 
with  wood,  and  driven  by  Indians;  and  occasionally  a  party  of 
American  prospectors  mounted  on  gaunt  horses,  with  their  bur- 
ros with  sacks  of  flour  and  other  necessaries,  marching  on  before. 
All  these  men  carried  arms  and  looked  serious.  I  think  the 
solemn  mountains  and  the  purple  sky  have  a  tendency  to  make 
people  quiet  and  sedate,  even  without  an  uncertain  tenure  to 
one's  scalp  being  added.  Indians  were  seen  plowing  in  the  fields 
by  the  roadside.  They  used  a  plow  made  of  three  sticks  —  a  big 
long  one  for  the  beam,  a  sharp  one  for  the  share,  and  a  crooked 
one  for  the  handle.  The  plows  ricochetted  along  at  the  heels  of 
diminutive  black-and-white  oxen.  The  Indian  costume  is  very 
simple:  it  consists  of  hair,  shirt  and  leggins.  The  Pueblo  Indian 
is  the  inventor  of  that  capillary  mutilation  known  as  the  "bang." 
His  heavy  black  hair  hangs  over  his  forehead,  and  is  cut  square 
across  even  with  his  eyebrows.  It  is  very  sweet.  In  childhood 
the  hair  is  cut  close  to  the  head,  with  the  exception  of  a  fringe 
round  the  lower  border,  which  curls  up  like  a  duck's  tail.  This 
adds  a  great  charm  to  Pueblo  infancy. 

A  pueblo  is  a  big  mud  house  built  around  a  court.     In  con- 


SOMETHING  MOKE  ABOUT  SANTA  F£.         65 

struction  it  reverses  the  principle  of  a  block-house.  The  upper 
story,  instead  of  projecting,  is  withdrawn.  The  householder 
ascends  to  the  top  of  a  lower  story  by  a  ladder,  and  enters 
"up-stairs"  by  a  door.  If  there  were  no  ladder  he  could  shin 
up  the  lightning  rod.  A  door  on  the  ground  floor  would  hurt 
the  feelings  of  the  late  Montezuma.  We  entered  several  apart- 
ments, including  that  of  the  Governor,  who  has  a  T-shaped 
opening  in  the  front  of  his  house  through  which  he  can  look 
out  and  see  everything.  He  was  looking  when  we  met  him, 
assisted  by  his  wife  and  child.  All  three  just  sat  and  looked. 
When  spoken  to  they  made  no  reply,  but  just  looked.  In  the 
course  of  a  year  they  must  see  a  great  deal.  Occasionally  a 
woman  or  child  came  out  on  the  upper  deck,  like  a  prairie  dog, 
and  took  a  look.  Others  were  at  work  cutting  wood.  In  an 
apartment  we  saw  a  girl,  whose  costume  consisted  of  two  yards 
of  half-width  calico  arranged  in  festoons,  grinding  meal.  A  slab 
of  hard  rock  is  fastened  at  an  incline  in  a  trough,  and  the  corn 
is  rubbed  on  this  with  a  stone  rolling-pin.  The  little  soft  black- 
and-white  corn  is  worn  up  very  rapidly.  The  rooms  were  swept 
very  clean,  but  pervaded  with  a  peculiar  and  pungent  odor. 
The  Pueblos  are  ugly,  sullen,  personally  dirty,  and  very  indus- 
trious. They  are  nominally  Catholics,  but  are  said  to  be  in  fact 
heathen,  who  believe  in  the  second  coming  of  Montezuma. 
They  seemed  to  be  looking  for  him  when  I  saw  them.  The 
Tesuque  Indians  are  said  to  be  poorer  and  less  aristocratic  than 
those  of  other  Pueblos.  In  the  matter  of  ugliness  they  cannot 
be  excelled  by  any  Indians  I  have  seen  except  our  own  lost 
Kaws.  Some  Apaches  who  came  into  Santa  Fe  on  horseback 
looked  like  noblemen  beside  the  citizens  of  Tesuque. 

I  tried,  from  the  conversation  of  old  residents,  to  reconstruct 
the  old-time  Santa  Fe,  but  in  vain.  Contrary  to  my  pre- 
vious belief,  I  found  Santa  Fe  during  the  days  of  the  old  over- 
land trade  was  a  quiet  town.  The  traders  parked  their  wagons 
on  the  plaza,  and  camped  themselves  on  a  piece  of  ground  known 
as  the  "United  States."  Each  wagon  paid  a  license  of  $500. 
The  principal  occupation  was  gambling,  and  the  most  famous 
gambler  in  Santa  Fe  was  a  native  woman,  Gertrudes  Barcelone, 


66  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

who  died  rich  and  was  buried  with  all  the  honors  of  the  church. 
The  native  people  have  changed  their  costume  and  habits  by 
almost  imperceptible  degrees,  but  enough  remains  to  interest  the 
traveler.  There  is  an  old  curiosity  shop  on  San  Francisco  street 
which  will  tell  you  more  in  half  an  hour  than  I  can  in  many 
letters.  The  sulky  clerk  will  say  nothing  to  you  if  you  do  not 
speak  to  him,  and  you  will  be  at  liberty  to  examine  the  collec- 
tion at  your  leisure.  Such  old  swords,  such  daggers,  such  books 
from  mouldy  convents,  such  costumes,  Spanish,  Mexican  and  In- 
dian, you  will  not  find  elsewhere.  In  that  odd  place  you  can 
weave  your  dreams  into  a  continuous  web  from  Cabeza  de  Vaca 
to  Governor  Sheldon.  If  you  would  further  call  up  the  spirits 
of  the  past,  go,  if  you  are  a  man  and  not  too  scrupulous,  into  a 
saloon  or  dancing-hall,  and  ask  the  Mexican  guitarist  and  his 
Italian  companions  with  their  violins  to  play  for  you  "  La  Fresca 
Rosa,"  or  the  fine  air  of  "Cinco  de  Mayo."  In  hearing  it  you 
will  perceive  and  almost  feel  for  yourself  that  uncaring  and  idle 
spirit  which  has  enabled  these  New-Mexicans  to  live  on,  unresist- 
ing and  content,  alike  under  oppression  and  freedom,  amid  the 
gathering  dust  of  eventless  centuries  or  the  noise  and  stir  of 
these  last  progressive  years.  The  tinkle  and  the  tang  of  the 
guitar,  a  fresh  cigarette,  the  invariable  " quien  sabe"  to  every 
troublesome  question,  are  enough,  and  the  crazy  world  may  go 
on  with  all  its  busy  madness  for  all  that  Jose"  or  Jesus  Maria 
cares.  You  know  all  this  when  you  hear  the  music,  and  you 
momentarily  adopt  the  sentiment  as  your  own. 

There  are  a  few  towns  it  is  a  pleasure  or  a  necessity  to  forget. 
You  would  not  remember  them  if  you  could;  you  could  not  if 
you  would.  But  I  doubt  if  I  ever  lose  anything  of  the  impres- 
sions of  dusty,  "dobe"  Santa  Fe.  Possibly  the  kindness  I  re- 
ceived there  would  preserve  the  memory  of  the  old  place  if  there 
were  nothing  else,  but  the  people  and  the  place  will  serve  each 
to  keep  the  recollection  of  the  other. 

Of  Santa  Fe  as  a  business  point  I  can  say  but  little,  since  I 
have  no  weakness  for  business  of  any  sort,  but  I  know  that  if  I 
was  dyspeptic,  worn  out,  a-weary  of  the  world,  tired  of  living 
and  yet  afraid  of  dying,  I  should  come  to  Santa  Fe  in  the  sum- 


SOMETHING  MORE  ABOUT  SANTA  F£.        67 

mer-time  and  take  some  big,  high  white  washed  rooms  in  a  Mexi- 
can house,  with  the  fireplace  in  the  corner;  and  with  books  at 
home  and  a  horse  to  ride  abroad,  I  believe  I  could  find  a  new 
body  and  a  fresh  soul.  I  would  lounge  on  the  plaza  and  admire 
the  unique  ugliness  of  the  three  old  crones  who  have  haunted  it 
from  time  immemorial,  and  do  nothing  with  great  care  and  elab- 
oration for  awhile,  and  then  I  would  return  to  the  United  States 
and  join  the  *'  march  of  progress,"  which  is  doubtless  a  great 
thing,  but  which  makes  many  people  footsore. 

What  has  been  written  has  been  written  as  the  truth.  I  can 
only  hope  that  such  of  my  friends  as  may  visit  Santa  Fe  here- 
after may  find  there  as  much  to  cheer  and  interest  them  as  I  did, 


ALBUQUERQUE  AND  ITS  NEIGHBORHOOD. 


LEAVING  Santa  Fe  in  the  middle  of  a  bright  afternoon  (all  af- 
ternoons are  bright  now),  we  arrived  without  disturbance  at 
Lainy  Junction,  and  lay  around  for  the  passenger  train  bound 
south,  which,  however,  was  preceded  by  an  excursion  train  loaded 
with  a  party  from  Massachusetts.  These  excursions  are  a  fea- 
ture of  the  "Santa  Fe's"  business  this  season,  and  have  resulted 
in  bringing  more  gentlemen  with  gray  side-whiskers  and  more 
ladies  with  eye-glasses  into  these  western  wilds,  than  were  ever- 
known  before.  This  party  was  piloted  as  several  others  have 
been  lately,  by  my  old  and  valued  friend  Col.  Ed.  Hareu,  and 
it  was  a  sort  of  satisfaction  to  know  that  these  Massachusetts 
Republicans  were  under  the  guidance  of  an  ex-Confederate  Mis- 
sourian.  Too  many  of  a  kind  is  no  good. 

On  Lamy,  when  the  sun  was  low,  the  passenger  train  descended 
from  the  heights  of  the  Glorieta  pass,  and  we  journeyed  on  through 
cliffs,  boulders,  sand  plains,  mesas,  mountains,  and  the  miscella- 
neous geology  of  this  country,  till  in  the  starlight  another  famous 
river  was  added  to  those  mine  eyes  have  seen,  to  wit:  the  Rio 
Grande.  It  is  a  cousin  to  the  Missouri,  the  Platte  and  the  Ar- 
kansas. Like  the  latter,  it  has  low  banks  and  a  double  bottom 
like  the  Great  American  Ballot  Box  used  in  close  districts.  It 
is  extensively  used  for  irrigation  purposes,  but  apparently  loses 
nothing.  If  all  the  water  were  bailed  out  of  it,  plenty  more 
would  rise  out  of  its  sands.  Rivers  of  this  character  are  evi- 
dently intended  for  irrigating  purposes,  and  nothing  else. 

At  Wallace,  where  we  stopped  for  supper,  was  a  mixed  multi- 
tude. United  States  people  in  every  variety ;  bareheaded  Mexican 
women  smoking  cigarettes;  and  Indians  from  a  neighboring  pu- 
eblo were  standing  around  in  their  striped  blankets  and  trying 
to  sell  turquoise  and  smoked  topaz.  The  town  was  suffering  or 
enjoying  an  Indian  scare.  Two  or  three  Apaches  had  come  into 

(68) 


ALBUQUERQUE  AND  ITS  NEIGHBORHOOD.      69 

town,  so  it  was  said,  and  it  was  expected  that  they  would  come 
back  with  their  friends  and  relatives.  To  meet  the  possible 
invaders,  a  military  company  had  been  organized  and  was  march- 
ing about  in  the  dusk,  the  martial  music  being  extracted  from  a 
tin  pan.  The  "tame"  Indians  paid  no  attention  to  these  warlike 
preparations,  and  evidently  thought  that  the  regular  run  of  the 
turquoise  business  would  not  be  interfered  with  by  the  Apaches. 

Albuquerque  was  the  next  point  of  interest.  This  town  is 
Kansas  headquarters,  and  here  the  Kansan  abroad  is  at  home. 
In  Albuquerque  it  is  said  the  justices  of  the  peace  are  sworn  to 
support  the  constitution  and  laws  of  the  State  of  Kansas.  If 
some  wandering  Kansas  politician  in  search  of  votes  should 
straggle  over  the  line  into  Albuquerque  he  would  never  know  the 
difference. 

Albuquerque,  like  Las  Vegas,  is  two  towns,  but  New  Albu- 
querque is  newer  and  Old  Albuquerque  is  older  than  correspond- 
ing portions  of  Las  Vegas.  Las  Vegas  has  a  name  signifying 
"The  Meadows."  Albuquerque  was  named  for  no  less  a  person 
than  the  great  Duke  of  Albuquerque,  Viceroy  of  Mexico.  In 
point  of  age,  Albuquerque  is  one  of  the  "way-up"  towns,  stand- 
ing in  the  class  with  Santa  Fe. 

One  of  the  pleasures  of  a  trip  to  New  Mexico  is  the  opportu- 
nity afforded  to  compare  the  very  new  with  the  very  old,  and  I 
have  visited  no  place  where  this  contrast  is  so  sharp  as  at  Albu- 
querque. At  Las  Vegas  there  is  nothing  very  old,  since  the 
Mexican  town  was  not  started  until  1835;  at  Santa  Fe  the  new 
and  old  are  somewhat  mixed  and  blended;  but  at  Albuquerque, 
taking  the  two  towns  together,  you  have  your  comparison  clear 
and  distinct.  In  the  new  town  you  see  the  American  settlement 
of  two  years  old;  in  the  old  town  the  Spanish  settlement  of  two 
:  hundred  years  old.  In  the  new  town  there  is  scarcely  a  Mexican 
>  house  in  its  original  or  any  other  shape;  in  the  old  there  is 
scarcely  an  American  house.  The  new  town  is  full  of  stir;  the 
old  full  of  quietness.  The  new  town  has  every  modern  improve- 
ment; the  old,  no  change.  You  take  the  street  cars  in  the 
new  town  and  you  go  in  a  few  moments  from  1882  to  1668.  The 
people,  the  avocations,  the  religion  even,  of  the  two  places  are 
5 


70  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

all  different.  Sin  is  said  to  be  as  old  as  man  and  time,  but  even 
the  vices  of  the  new  town  are  those  of  young  communities.  The 
new  town  plays  poker  with  a  high  hand,  and  the  old  sticks  to 
monte  in  the  shade. 

Familiar  as  I  am  with  the  growth  of  towns  in  the  West,  I 
have  never  seen  anything  so  rapid  as  that  of  the  new  town  of 
Albuquerque.  A  town  of  shanties  not  unfrequently  comes  into 
being  inside  of  a  couple  of  years,  but  very  seldom  does  a  town 
spring  into  existence  with  daily  papers,  depots,  railroad  shops, 
big  hotels,  large  wholesale  establishments,  gas  works  and  a  street 
railway,  within  the  space  of  twenty-four  months.  This  is,  with- 
out exaggeration,  what  has  happened  at  Albuquerque  the  younger. 
Of  course  I  availed  myself  of  the  opportunity  to  look  at  both 
towns.  The  new  town  did  not  require  careful  inspection.  It  is 
spread  out  on  broad  streets,  so  much  lumber,  brick  and  mortar, 
and  more  coming;  but  the  old  town  is  a  different  matter.  A 
curious  maze  of  spreading  adobe  houses,  with  long,  wooden-pil- 
lared porches,  is  old  Albuquerque.  It  is  situated  on  the  banks 
of  the  Rio  Grande,  and  acequias  run  all  around  and  all  over  it. 
The  most  prominent  feature  in  all  Mexican  towns  is  the  ditch. 
It  has  the  right  of  way  against  everything  else.  The  flowing 
water  comes  suddenly  from  under  an  adobe  wall  and  runs  across 
the  road  and  under  another  wall  and  out  into  a  field,  where  it 
divides  into  a  dozen  streams,  or  spreads  all  around  among  the 
alfalfa  or  wheat.  The  pedestrian  on  the  plaza  suddenly  encoun- 
ters a  stream  running  across  his  path.  It  is  the  water  let  on 
above  by  some  unseen  party,  who  is  sending  the  precious  fluid  to 
gladden  his  garden  half  a  mile  off,  or  to  furnish  mud  for  his 
adobe-making  operations.  In  driving  about  the  country,  you 
drive  over  the  all-pervading  ditch  a  dozen  times  in  as  many  hun- 
dred yards,  and  the  power  of  water  on  this,  to  a  Kansas  man, 
wretched-looking  soil,  red  as  a  bummer's  nose  and  full  of  young 
boulders,  is  wonderful.  The  very  cottonwood,  in  this  country  a 
spreading  shade  tree,  takes  on  a  brighter  green.  At  Albuquerque 
and  all  along  the  valley  of  the  Rio  Grande  are  vineyards,  planted 
long  ago,  bearing  the  Mission  grape,  introduced  by  the  Francis- 
cans, and  said  to  be,  by  all  New-Mexicans,  native  and  adopted, 


ALBUQUERQUE  AND  ITS  NEIGHBORHOOD.       71 

the  finest  grape  in  the  world.  The  vines  are  not  trained  on 
walls  or  trellises,  or  suffered  to  run  up  trees,  as  in  Italy ;  they  are 
cut  back  till  they  give  up  trying  to  be  vines  at  all,  and  turn  into 
scrubby,  gnarled  and  knotty  bushes.  Each  bush  can  be  counted 
on  for  a  given  number  of  bunches  of  grapes. 

While  John  Price,  now  liveryman  of  Albuquerque,  New  Town, 
formerly  of  North  Topeka,  Kansas,  was  driving  me  about,  we 
visited  the  Indian  school  about  a  mile  from  the  elder  Albuquerque. 
The  school  is  primarily  a  mission  establishment  of  the  Presbyte- 
rian church,  but  it  is  also  a  Government  boarding  school  for  young 
Indians;  the  Government  of  the  United  States  paying  $125  per 
annum  toward  the  board,  clothing  and  education  of  each  Indian 
pupil. 

The  school  has  taken  possession  of  a  former  Mexican  farm 
house,  one  of  those  rambling  affairs  which  extend  over  a  great 
acre  of  ground,  with  rooms  enough  for  a  hotel ;  and  here  we  found 
about  forty  "little  Injuns"  under  the  principalship  of  Professor 
Shearer,  formerly  of  Concordia,  assisted  by  several  ladies  ap- 
pointed by  the  Presbyterian  Board.  The  little  Indians  were 
recruited  at  the  different  pueblos  of  New  Mexico,  it  being 
thought,  perhaps,  that  the  agricultural  Indians  would  take  more 
kindly  to  civilized  ways  than  the  children  of  the  wild  people. 
So  here  they  were,  forty  dusky  little  Indians  of  unmixed  blood, 
for  the  Pueblos  do  not  intermarry  with  any  other  people.  They 
were  dressed  in  the  clumsy  clothes  which  civilization  has  imposed 
on  us,  and  which  we  make  it  a  duty  to  impose  on  other  people, 
and  were  being  taught  the  infernal  intricacies  of  English  orthog- 
raphy. They  sang  a  hymn,  and  at  my  especial  request,  the  bold 
anthem  of  "Johnny  Schmoker."  I  thought  that  barbarous 
enough  to  gratify  their  native  instincts,  and  make  them  feel  happy- 
Prof.  Shearer  and  his  assistants  are  kind  and  conscientious,  and 
do,  I  doubt  not,  all  they  can  for  their  copper-colored  charges ; 
but  at  the  risk  of  being  called  a  heathen  man  and  a  publican,  I 
will  say  that  the  experiment  impressed  me  unfavorably.  As  a 
Kansas  man,  I  have  always  been  warmly  in  favor  of  killing 
Indians,  but  I  do  not  like  to  see  anybody  tormented,  and  it  seems 
to  me  that  is  all  these  Indian-educational  experiments  amount  to. 


72  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

These  children  speak  Spanish :  what  is  the  use  of  teaching  them 
English?  If  they  grow  up  at  their  native  pueblos  they  will 
plow,  and  cut  wood  and  sell  it,  and  work  after  their  fashion. 
Why  put  them  in  the  harness  in  a  manual-labor  school?  They 
have  Indian  names.  Why  change  them?  They  have  Indian 
dresses.  Why  put  them  into  horrid  coats  and  hideous  pants? 
It  is  not  natural,  and  I  do  not  believe  it  is  healthful.  I  am  told 
that  the  Indian  boys  sent  to  Carlisle  cannot  endure  the  climate, 
and  die  off.  The  same  fact  is  observable  elsewhere.  I  have  a 
profound  respect  for  everybody's  good  intentions,  but  I  do  wish 
there  was  some  way  to  let  the  Indians  alone.  I  had  rather  have 
seen  one  of  these  little  Indian  boys  dressed  in  a  shirt,  or  a 
liver  pad,  or  a  postage  stamp,  trotting  happy  and  uncon- 
cerned around  his  native  adobe,  and  bearing  his  own  Indian 
name,  and  growing  up  an  Indian,  than  to  see  him  dressed  up 
in  uncomfortable  clothes,  with  his  name  changed  to  Hezekiah 
Jones,  and  that  instrument  of  torture,  an  English  spelling- 
book  in  his  hand.  This  may  be  what,  in  the  language  of  the 
Pacific-coast  humorist,  is  called  a  "  flowery  break,"  but  what 
I  have  seen  has  sickened  me  with  our  whole  system  of  In- 
dian management.  If  the  whole  business  could  be  settled  on  the 
principle  of  "you  let  me  alone  and  I  will  let  you  alone,"  I  think 
heaven  and  earth  would  have  reason  to  rejoice. 

In  this  connection  I  may  say  that  I  have  been  impressed  by 
the  views  of  Mr.  Bandelier,  a  scientist,  who  has  lived  in  Indian 
villages  and  studied  the  inhabitants.  He  says  that  the  Spanish 
in  Mexico,  after  a  century  or  so  of  persecution  and  interference, 
finally  concluded  to  let  the  Indians  alone,  save  that  they  were 
obliged  to  accept  the  Catholic  religion.  The  Indians  took  as 
much  of  this  religion  as  they  wanted,  and  let  the  rest  alone.  In 
other  matters  the  Indians  were  left  to  do  as  they  pleased ;  govern 
themselves  in  their  villages,  preserve  their  customs,  their  tribal 
relations,  etc.  In  time,  of  themselves,  they  abandoned  their 
ancient  ways,  became  citizens,  took  part  in  the  affairs  of  the 
country,  furnished  soldiers  and  generals  for  the  Mexican  army, 
and  Benito  Juarez,  the  greatest  man  Mexico  has  produced,  was 
an  Indian  of  unmixed  blood.  I  do  not  believe  the  Mexican 


ALBUQUERQUE  AND  ITS  NEIGHBORHOOD.       73 

Indians  differ  much  in  nature  from  our  Indians,  yet  how  differ- 
ent the  result  in  "  benighted  Mexico,"  as  we  are  fond  of  calling 
it,  and  the  United  States.  We  began  wrong  and  have  followed 
along  with  a  mixture  of  treaties  and  fights,  and  Bibles  and 
whisky,  and  missionaries  and  thieves,  and  fraud  and  force,  and 
annuities  and  starvation,  and  we  have  the  cheek  all  the  time  to 
call  it  an  "Indian  policy."  The  result  is,  that  the  Indian  has 
now  no  fate  but  death.  Put  him  in  school,  and  he  dies  of  pneu- 
monia or  consumption;  turn  him  loose,  and  he  kills  himself  with 
whisky;  put  him  on  a  reservation,  and  he  breaks  out  and  kills 
the  first  man  he  meets ;  and  after  giving  a  great  deal  of  trouble, 
gets  killed  himself.  This  is  what  the  most  pious,  the  most  en- 
lightened, the  cutest,  the  smartest,  the  most  ingenious  Nation  on 
earth  does  about  Indians. 

Among  the  pleasant  incidents  of  my  visit  to  Albuquerque  was 
a  trip  to  Bear  canon.  It  may  be  stated,  in  the  first  place,  that 
every  modern  New-Mexican  town  has  its  own  mountains  or  range 
of  mountains,  and  that  each  mountain  or  range  has  its  canon  or 
canons.  The  distance  from  town  varies  from  three  to  eighteen 
miles;  consequently  this  is  the  chosen  land  of  picnics.  The 
canon  always  furnishes  a  resort,  and  you  know  it  will  never  rain 
till  July.  A  sort  of  picnic  was  the  gathering  in  the  Bear  canon, 
twelve  miles  from  Albuquerque. 

The  party  consisted  of  Mr.  W.  S.  Burke,  formerly  of  the 
Leaven  worth  Times;  Capt.  George  E.  Beates,  of  Junction  City, 
now  employed  on  Government  surveys  in  Arizona;  Mr.  Whit- 
ney; a  driver,  name  unknown;  the  writer;  and  an  old  prospector, 
who,  naturally  gifted  in  that  direction,  has  developed  by  practice 
into  the  most  enormous  liar  in  the  Territory  of  New  Mexico.  It 
was  up  hill  all  the  way  across  the  dry  sloping  prairie  that 
stretches  to  the  foot  of  the  Sandias,  but  I  think  he  gave  us  a  lie 
for  each  revolution  of  the  wagon  wheels.  Being  quite  deaf,  he 
could  not  hear  the  glowing  falsehoods  which  were  returned  him 
as  a  sort  of  small  change  for  his  tremendous  fabrications,  but  he 
was  very,  very  happy  as  it  was.  His  object  was  to  show  us  in- 
dications of  mineral  he  had  discovered  in  the  canon,  but  his 
labor  was  in  vain.  After  our  experience  on  the  way  up,  he  might 


74  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

have  tumbled  into  a  two-foot  streak  of  twenty-dollar  gold  pieces, 
and  we  would  not  have  believed  in  him. 

The  canon,  to  return  to  the  object  of  the  excursion,  was  found 
a  beautiful  spot;  a  winding  cleft  amid  enormous  piles  of  rock 
massed  in  every  fantastic  shape,  and  finally  solidifying  into  per- 
pendicular cliffs.  A  mountain  stream  clear  as  crystal  flowed 
over  a  bed  of  shining  gravel,  but  utterly  disappeared  in  the 
sands  within  a  hundred  yards  from  the  mouth  of  the  canon.  So 
the  little  stream  goes  on  day  and  night,  year  after  year,  with  its 
fruitless  labors,  gathering  the  melted  snow  from  the  mountain- 
top — gathering  from  each  spring  along  its  way,  only  to  pour  its 
flood  at  last  upon  the  evil  and  unthankful  desert  of  the  plain. 


SOCORRO. 


AT  Albuquerque  the  matter  of  mining  stares  you  in  the  face, 
and  you  are  obliged  to  confront  the  question  whether  you  are  a 
miner,  a  prospector,  or  a  mining  broker ;  whether  you  have  mines 
to  buy  or  mines  to  sell ;  in  short,  to  decide  whether  you  have  any 
past,  present  or  future  interests  in  mines. 

For  myself,  I  have  no  earthly  interest  in  any  mine  or  mines, 
and  unless  the  knowledge  is  acquired  on  the  present  journey  I 
shall  never  really  know  anything  about  mines.  This  ignorance 
I  enjoy  in  common  with  a  vast  number  of  my  fellow-citizens  who 
pretend  to  know  more.  There  is  no  subject  on  which  more  notes 
of  talk  are  issued  on  a  small  paid-up  capital  of  knowledge  than 
this  question  of  mining.  As  some  of  the  most  inveterate  gam- 
blers I  have  ever  known  were  men  who  had  no  skill  at  cards 
and  never  could  acquire  any,  so  these  mountains  and  mesas  are 
full  of  men  talking  about  carbonates  and  chlorides  and  sulphur- 
ets,  and  spending  their  own  money,  but  more  frequently  the 
money  of  other  people  who  have  no  practical  knowledge  of  mines 
or  mining,  and  whose  words  and  opinions  are  of  no  more  value 
than  the  gentle  warblings  of  a  burro.  From  such  it  is  of  course 
useless  to  seek  information,  and  yet  they  are  the  men  who  pre- 
sume to  instruct  the  "tender-foot,"  as  they  call  the  man  who  has 
arrived  in  the  country  two  weeks  later  than  themselves. 

At  Albuquerque  I  was  a-weary  of  the  talk  about  prospects 
and  "good  indications"  and  assays,  and  all  that,  and  went  to 
Socorro  to  see  a  mine  in  active  operation  and  sending  ore  to  the 
smelter  or  stamp  mill. 

The  journey  from  Albuquerque  to  Socorro  was  made  in  the 
night,  and  no  note  can  be  made  of  the  scenery  along  the  road. 
Socorro  was  seen  for  the  first  time  in  the  early  light  o/  the  next 

morning. 

(75) 


76  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

Socorro  is  a  Spanish  word,  signifying  "succor."  It  is  said  to 
derive  its  name  from  the  fact  that  the  fugitives  from  Santa  Fe, 
driven  out  by  the  Indians  in  1680,  here  received  help  from  their 
countrymen  at  El  Paso.  The  story  as  told  now  is  that  the  Span- 
iards were  shut  up  in  a  pueblo  at  or  near  the  present  site  of 
Socorro,  and  that  a  messenger  jumped  down  a  rock  200  feet  high, 
spreading  out  his  coat  tail  and  using  it  as  a  parachute,  and  so 
reaching  the  ground  in  safety,  made  his  way  to  El  Paso  and  re- 
turned with  help.  The  story  of  the  jump  I  do  not  believe  by 
several  feet,  nor  do  I  believe  it  is  of  native  origin.  It  sounds 
like  a  story  invented  in  front  of  the  old  Tefft  House  in  Topeka, 
and  enlarged  by  the  effects  of  the  New-Mexican  climate.  Ho*w- 
ever,  whether  the  story  of  Socorro  is  true  or  not,  the  town  is  here; 
a  good-looking  Mexican  town  to  begin  with,  with  a  sort  of  double 
plaza  and  an  adobe  church  of  great  antiquity  and  extreme  ugli- 
ness. The  American  town  is  joined  on  to  the  Mexican  town,  and 
will  probably  inclose  it  in  time.  I  have  not  seen  in  the  suburbs 
of  any  other  New-Mexican  town  so  many  pleasant  homes.  The 
irrigating  business  is  carried  on  extensively,  as  at  old  Albuquer- 
que, and  surrounding  the  town  is  the  same  maze  of  narrow  lanes 
with  high  adobe  walls.  Many  cottonwoods  and  other  trees  flour- 
ish along  the  banks  of  the  acequias.  One  lane  and  one  tree  has 
a  history.  Up  this  lane  the  vigilantes  were  accustomed  to  march 
gentlemen  who  were  no  longer  useful  nor  ornamental  in  society, 
and  on  this  gentle  and  unpretending  cottonwood,  with  a  limb 
projecting  over  the  dusty  lane,  they  were  hung,  the  top  of  the 
garden  wall  serving  as  the  platform  of  the  scaffold.  This  severe 
treatment  was  so  efficacious  that  it  is  no  longer  needful,  and  the 
last  parties  to  a  "hold-up"  were  only  horse-whipped  and  com- 
pelled to  leave  the  town.  These  little  episodes  are  unpleasant, 
but  they  serve  to  decide  whether  a  town  shall  be  ruled  by  its 
roughs  or  its  better  element. 

It  must  not  be  understood,  however,  that  courts  and  the  judi- 
cial ermine,  and  the  scales  of  justice,  do  not  exist  in  New  Mexico. 
I  saw  the  United  States  court  in  session  at  old  Albuquerque. 
The  hall  of  justice  was  in  a  low-ceiled  room  in  an  adobe  building 
near  the  pFaza.  Two  lawyers  were  enlightening  the  court  on  the 


SOCORRO.  77 

subject  of  deeds.  The  jury,  composed  of  Mexicans,  did  not 
understand  a  word  of  it  all,  and  looked  as  stupid  and  miserable 
as  the  average  American  jury.  His  Honor,  a  newly-arrived 
New-Yorker,  seemed  to  have  a  pained  and  apprehensive  look; 
perhaps,  however,  he  was  only  trying  to  look  judicial.  There 
was  a  crowd  of  lawyers.  They  were  as  thick  as  fiddlers  in  a 
place  formerly  much  talked  about.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  an 
attorney  from  Larned,  Kansas,  sat  in  the  midst.  The  whole 
scene  was  as  tiresome  as  a  district  court  in  the  United  States.  It 
is  well;  if  people  will  have  civilization  and  enlightenment,  let 
them  take  the  consequences. 

Socorro  boasts  one  of  the  few  stamp  mills  and  smelters  in  this 
part  of  New  Mexico.  From  the  multiplicity  of  mines  and  min- 
ing companies  one  would  suppose  these  structures  would  be  as 
common  as  school  houses  in  Kansas.  They  are  not,  however. 
A  stamp  mill  is  a  mill  whose  ground  grist  is  silver,  with  which 
you  can  buy  anything,  except  an  interest  in  the  kingdom  of 
heaven:  A  stamp  mill,  therefore,  seen  for  the  first  time,  is  a 
matter  worthy  of  inspection. 

The  stamp  mill  at  Socorro  is  an  average  structure  of  the  kind, 
I  suppose.  It  cost  more  than  it  ought  to,  owing  to  a  variety  of 
untoward  circumstances.  The  gentleman  who  showed  me  over 
it  said  that  such  a  mill,  under  favorable  conditions,  could  be  built 
for  $45,000.  A  stamp  mill  is  in  appearance  very  much  like  a 
coal  breaker — a  high,  raw-boned  affair,  with  an  inclined  railway 
up  which  the  ore,  which  looks  like  red  dust  and  broken  sand- 
stone, is  hauled  in  little  iron  cars.  Once  at  the  top  of  the  house, 
the  ore  is  fed  from  a  hopper  into  a  sort  of  iron  jaw,  which  cracks 
it,  and  then  water  is  introduced  and  it  goes  down  under  the 
stamps.  These  stamps  are  pillars,  or  rather  pestles,  of  chilled 
iron,  which  are  lifted  and  dropped  by  a  cam  movement,  which  at 
the  same  time  gives  them  a  rotary  motion.  Every  Yankee  boy 
who  has  ever  "pounded  out  corn"  in  a  barrel  can*  understand  the 
operation.  The  pounding  process  is  the  most  natural,  and  is  su- 
perior to  any  grinding  machinery.  The  ore  reduced  to  a  powder 
with  water,  drops  down  into  various  tanks  and  is  subjected  to  the 
action  of  salt  and  hot  water,  which  effects  chloridization,  what- 


78  SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 

ever  that  is,  and  finally  the  junction  of  the  silver  with  quick- 
silver is  effected.  This  mass  of  silver  and  quicksilver  is  retorted, 
i.  e.,  it  is  heated  in  a  retort;  the  quicksilver  is  vaporized  and  passes 
over  to  be  condensed  and  saved  with  very  little  waste,  and  the 
silver  remains.  This  is  the  amalgamation  process  which  every- 
body in  Colorado,  New  Mexico,  Arizona,  Utah  and  California 
knows  all  about,  but  of  which  thousands  of  people  in  Kansas 
have  no  adequate  conception.  This  process  seems  very  compli- 
cated and  scientific,  but  it  was  practiced  in  this  country  by  the 
Spaniards  centuries  ago.  With  their  rude  machinery  they  did 
not  do  as  much  in  a  given  time  as  we  do,  but  our  processes  are  in 
substance  the  same.  Col.  George  Noble,  formerly  of  the  Kansas 
Pacific,  who  has  looked  at  many  old  Spanish  mines,  says  no  ore 
is  found  in  the  waste.  They  dug  out  all  the  ore  and  carried  it 
"clear  away."  They  evidently  knew  all  about  mining. 

The  smelter  was  not  running,  and  so  I  can  tell  nothing  of  the 
operations.  When  I  get  farther  along  in  my  education  I  will 
describe  it.  There  is  a  distinction  between  ores,  some  requiring 
the  amalgamation  process;  others  the  smelting.  I  am  not  "way 
up"  enough  yet  in  the  business  to  describe  the  difference.  The 
stamp  mill  at  Socorro  is  employed  exclusively  on  the  ore  from 
the  Torrence  mine,  of  which  more  further  on. 

Back  of  Socorro,  if  a  town  can  be  said  to  have  a  back,  and 
three  miles  away,  rises  a  high-shouldered  eminence,  not  so  sharp 
and  flinty  as  most  New-Mexican  mountains,  called  Socorro 
Mountain,  and  from  it  comes  silver  and  warm  water.  Through 
the  kindness  of  Mr.  Walker,  formerly  of  Holton,  Kansas,  we 
were  furnished  a  conveyance,  and  Dr.  Lapham,  of  Socorro,  as  a 
guide.  We  journeyed  along  over  a  plain  covered  with  yellow 
flowers,  a  sort  of  Mexican  cross  between  a  buttercup  and  a  dan- 
delion, and  kept  close  to  an  acequia  filled  with  warm  water.  This 
stream,  conveyed  in  troughs,  turns  the  high,  narrow  overshot 
wheels  of  no  less  than  three  little  grist  mills,  which  formerly 
ground  a  good  deal  of  wheat  raised  by  the  Mexicans  in  the  Rio 
Grande  valley.  A  hot-water  mill  can  count  for  a  novelty.  The 
spring  was  reached  at  the  foot  of  the  mountain,  or  a  low-lying 
spur  of  it.  The  water  comes  out  of  a  cleft  in  the  rocks,  and 


SOCORRO.  79 

forms  a  pool  fifty  feet  long  by  twenty-five  wide.  The  water  is  so 
clear  that  the  atmosphere  forms  the  only  comparison.  The  water 
is  not  hot,  but  warm.  A  red  crag  rises  perpendicularly  from  the 
water.  A  visitor  usually  says :  "  I  think  this  rock  is  volcanic  in 
its  origin."  In  this  case  it  is  in  order  for  some  other  visitor  to 
say:  "You  are  quite  mistaken;  it  is  sedimentary."  How  impos- 
ing are  these  discussions  in  which  neither  party  knows  anything 
about  the  question. 

Whether  the  heat  of  the  spring  is  due  to  volcanic  or  chemical 
action,  it  is  a  great  blessing  to  Socorro.  It  has  uncommon 
cleansing  properties,  both  for  people  and  shirts ;  it  turns  grist 
mills,  waters  gardens,  and  is  occasionally  drunk  with  other  sub- 
stances, which  in  their  effect  confirm  the  volcanic  theory. 

Our  guide  proved  most  entertaining  and  instructive,  and  after 
pointing  out  the  beauty  and  usefulness  of  the  spring,  we  went  on 
to  the  "front  and  center"  of  the  mountain,  to  the  Torrence  mine. 

The  mouth  of  the  mine  is  covered  by  a  building  a  hundred 
yards  from  the  base.  A  silver  mine  is  a  clean  mine;  there  is 
nothing  black  about  it.  It  is  all  white  or  red  dust  of  unknown 
depth,  and  piles  of  ore  and  waste.  The  first  thing  that  strikes 
the  observer  at  the  Torrence  is  the  solid  finish  and  apparent  cost 
of  everything.  The  engine,  the  buildings,  the  wire  cables,  all 
spoke  of  money  spent. 

Under  the  guidance  of  Mr.  Newton,  the  superintendent,  we 
went  down  the  slope  into  the  mine.  The  entrance,  like  all  the 
rest  of  the  mine,  is  planked  on  the  sides  and  overhead.  It  was 
like  a  long  box.  When  we  reached  the  bottom  of  the  slope, 
which  was  done  by  means  of  steps,  we  had  descended  203  feet. 

The  ore  in  the  Torrence  lies  in  a  stratum  tipped  up  at  an  angle 
of  forty-five  degrees.  Consequently,  galleries  are  run  in  at  dif- 
ferent levels,  the  main  gallery  being  the  lowest.  Then  the  miner 
follows  the  vein  upward  along  the  incline,  and  this  is  called 
"stoping."  Occasionally  the  vein  "swells" — that  is,  becomes 
wider  —  and  sometimes  it  "pinches."  But  wherever  it  goes  the 
miner  follows  it  as  a  ferret  follows  a  rat.  If  it  goes  down,  he 
goes  down,  and  if  it  goes  up,  he  climbs  the  slopes.  If  he  loses  it, 
he  finds  it  again.  Wherever  that  red-and-white  streak  goes, 


80  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

there  he  goes.  It  seemed  strange,  that  eager  and  toilsome  bur- 
rowing down  in  the  depths  of  the  earth  after  a  few  pounds  of 
shining  metal  which  few  of  us  can  get  hold  of  after  all. 

The  mine  was  perfectly  free  from  water  or  even  dampness. 
New  Mexico  must  be  dry  clear  to  the  bottom.  The  hill  in  which 
the  mine  is  situated  seems  a  pile  of  loose  rocks — the  walls  broke 
down  easily  before  the  pick.  But  this  easy  digging  makes  tim- 
bering necessary,  and  a  great  amount  of  native  lumber  has  been 
used  up. 

There  are  now  about  one  hundred  men  in  the  mine.  Those 
addressed  were  Americans  and  bright  men,  who  spoke  as  if  they 
could  own  a  mine  if  they  wished.  In  fact,  many  of  them  are 
prospectors  who  have  gone  below  ground  to  raise  a  stake,  and 
when  they  have  got  another  start  will  continue  their  quest  for  a 
mine  which  shall  make  them  rich  in  a  minute. 

But  while  we  are  talking  about  mines,  all  the  stories  pale  be- 
fore those  told  of  the  Lake  Valley  group  —  stories  of  ore  so  fine 
that  a  lighted  candle  will  melt  the  lead  and  leave  pure  silver; 
stories  of  offers  of  $50,000  for  the  ore  one  man  could  dig  out  in 
six  hours;  stories  of  the  Bridal  Chamber,  lined  with  silver  and 
lead  so  that  a  pick  driven  into  the  wall  sticks  as  if  driven  into  a 
mass  of  putty.  And  they  say  these  mines  are  owned  by  Quakers 
in  Philadelphia.  So  goes  luck  in  this  world :  while  hundreds  of 
miners,  experts,  gamblers,  speculators,  etc.,  are  charging  wildly 
over  the  country,  betting  and  losing,  these  sleek  Quakers  come  in 
for  the  fattest  silver  mine  in  creation.  It  is  all  so  wonderful  that 
I  shall  make  an  effort  to  go  to  Lake  Valley. 

Dr.  L.,  without  making  pretensions  to  being  an  antiquarian, 
has  visited  many  places  of  antiquity  in  New  Mexico,  and  among 
them  a  point  sixty  miles  from  Socorro  known  as  Gran  Quivira. 
Here  are  the  remains,  now  utterly  deserted,  of  a  very  large 
town.  It  is  now  fifteen  miles  from  water,  yet  there  are  traces  of 
ditches.  This  town  has  a  ruined  church,  and  this  was  the  Qui- 
vira of  Coronado.  At  the  risk  of  being  no  longer  allowed  to 
live  in  Kansas,  I  must  say  that  nobody  in  New  Mexico  believes 
that  Coronado  ever  visited  Kansas.  This  is  humiliating,  partic- 
ularly since  Major  Inman  has  marched  him  directly  to  the  bluff 


SOCORRO.  81 

of  South  Fourth  street,  Atchison,  on  which  Senator  Ingalls's 
residence  is  at  present  located.  The  claim  has  been  insisted  on 
because  Coronado  describes  his  meeting  with  the  buffalo ;  but  those 
beasts  have,  within  the  memory  of  living  man,  been  seen  within 
twenty  miles  of  Albuquerque.  I  am  afraid  Coronado  as  a  Kan- 
sas explorer  is  a  myth.  It  is  a  consolation  to  know,  however, 
that  if  he  failed  to  discover  Kansas  plenty  of  better  men  have 
found  it. 


A  GLIMPSE  OF  MEXICO. 


THE  train  leaving  Socorro  for  the  southwest  at  one  o'clock  in 
the  morning  crosses  the  famous  Jornada  del  Muerto  before  it  is 
daylight,  consequently  I  did  not  see  the  desolate  region  made 
familiar  to  Kansas  readers  by  one  of  "DeaneMonahan's"  strik- 
ing sketches.  But  I  may  say  here,  that  where  I  have  had  the 
opportunity  for  observation,  I  have  had  occasion  to  testify  to  the 
charming  fidelity  of  our  Kansas  writer  to  every  detail  of  New- 
Mexican  life  and  scenery. 

Shortly  after  leaving  the  borders  of  the  Jornada,  we  entered 
upon  what  a  fellow-passenger  assured  me  was  the  "Garden  of 
New  Mexico."  He  referred  to  the  borders  of  the  Rio  Grande,  in 
which  are  located  the  vineyards  and  orchards  of  Las  Cruces. 
But  for  the  railroad,  it  is  evidently  "over  the  garden  wall,"  run- 
ning through  a  laud  devoted  to  rocks,  soap-weed  and  cactus,  the 
most  prominent  of  the  hundred  or  so  varieties  of  the  latter  being 
what  a  friend  calls  the  "broom-handle"  species,  which  throws  up 
its  leafless  arms  like  a  devil-fish,  and  at  the  end  of  each  bears  a 
single  brilliant  scarlet  flower. 

Fort  Selden,  standing  in  a  wilderness,  I  took  for  an  abandoned 
adobe,  when  several  blue-coats  made  their  appearance  amid  the 
roofless  walls.  The  post  has  been  reoccupied  by  a  portion  of  the 
large  force  now  concentrating  in  this  region  to  chase  a  few  score 
Indians.  The  next  military  establishment  passed  was  a  neat 
little  post,  Fort  Bliss.  Here  was  an  immense  pile  of  the  roots 
of  the  mesquite,  used  for  fuel,  for  here,  as  an  "  old  residenter " 
remarks,  you  climb  for  water  and  dig  for  wood. 

Here  was  El  Paso,  "The  Pass,"  where  the  Rio  Grande  breaks 
through  a  rocky  barrier;  where  the  Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa 
Fe  crowds  by  with  it;  and  once  through  it  you  are  at  the  north- 
ern gate  of  Mexico.  The  Spaniards  long  ago  recognized  this 

(82) 


A   GLIMPSE   OP   MEXICO.  83 

fact,  and  named  their  town  El  Paso  del  Norte —  the  Pass  of  the 
North.  The  Americans  caught  at  the  idea,  and  re-named  an  old 
Texas  town  El  Paso  also.  ^ 

This  tawny  town  is  the  dividing  line  between  two  Nations. 
That  low  shore  beyond  the  swift  yellow  stream  is  Mexico,  a  for- 
eign land.  Mexico:  the  name  was  associated  with  some  of  my 
earliest  recollections.  The  "  Mexican  war,"  a  great  war  until  it 
and  all  our  other  wars  were  lost  in  a  mightier  struggle,  began  with 
the  first  link  of  the  continuous  chain  of  my  memory.  What 
heroes  they  were — Taylor  and  Scott,  and  Ringgold  with  his  flying 
artillery,  and  Capt.  May  with  his  dragoons.  How  Capt.  May 
used  to  "show  up"  in  the  pictures,  riding  over  the  Mexican  guns 
and  the  green-coated  cannoneers;  and  how  colossal  we  thought 
the  battles,  Resaca  de  la  Palma,  and  Palo  Alto,  and  Molino  del 
Rey,  and  Buena  Vista.  We  remember,  now,  only  that  certain 
great  generals  were  lieutenants  in  those  battles.  Notwithstand- 
ing all  that,  the  impressions  of  childhood  are  hard  to  overcome, 
and  Mexico  has  always  been  to  me  a  land  of  interest,  a  land  to 
be  visited  sometime  —  and  here  at  last  was  Mexico. 

The  American  town  of  El  Paso,  although  a  growing  place,  the 
junction  of  the  Southern  Pacific,  Texas  Pacific,  and  Atchison, 
Topeka  &  Santa  Fe  roads,  failed  for  the  time  to  interest  me, 
even  though  I  found  at  the  Grand  Central  rny  old  friend  Col. 
George  Noble,  who  sat  up  with  the  Kansas  Pacific  in  its  infancy, 
but  has  now  retired  from  railroading  and  is  devoted  to  town  lots 
and  mines,  with,  the  neighbors  say,  satisfactory  financial  results. 
I  crossed  the  river  at  the  first  opportunity,  and  stood  on  the  soil 
of  Mexico.  A  young  Mexican  with  a  revolver  and  cartridge- 
belt,  who  said  "Bueno,"  as  the  carriage  went  off  the  ferry-boat, 
was  the  only  evidence  of  a  foreign  national  sovereignty. 

The  American  Consul  in  Paso  del  Norte  is  Mr.  Richardson, 
but  the  American  official  most  visited  by  his  fellow-countrymen 
is  Governor  George  T.  Anthony,  Superintendent  of  the  Mexican 
Central  Railroad.  He  was  found  in  his  office,  looking  much  the 
same  as  when  he  transacted  business  in  the  southeast  corner  of 
the  capitol  at  Topeka,  save  perhaps  a  trifle  older  from  passing 
years  and  much  hard  work. 


84  SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 

This  at  last  was  a  genuine  Mexican  town,  still  sporting  the 
cactus  and  the  eagle;  no  New  Mexico  affair,  subjected  to  thirty- 
six  years  of  the  rule  of  the  "Estados  Unidos  del  Norte"  as  I  saw 
it  on  a  Mexican  map.  Well,  hardly;  for  in  going  up  the  street 
I  saw  the  sign  "The  Little  Church  Around  the  Corner;"  the 
American  rum  mill  had  crossed  the  frontier.  Still  it  was  Mexi- 
can. Dark  faces,  two-story  huts  with  a  piazza  all  around,  and 
women  sitting  flat  on  the  narrow  bulkheads,  made  of  "cobbles," 
were  the  rule,  and  fair  faces  and  a  swinging  gait  the  exception. 
The  streets  were  narrow,  almost  deserted  by  wheeled  carriages, 
with  the  interminable  wall  of  adobe,  white  plastered  houses 
stretching  away  on  either  side,  and  fairly  shining  in  the  sun.  It 
was  so  still;  so  unlike  the  Texas  town  on  the  other  side;  so  un- 
like anything  under  the  American  heaven.  Of  course  there  was 
the  church,  plastered  to  shining  whiteness  on  the  outside,  much 
more  imposing  than  the  churches  in  New  Mexico,  which  stand 
unadorned  but  not  beautiful  in  their  native  mud  color.  Having 
read  "  The  Priest  of  El  Paso,"  we  went  to  see  him.  He  was  found 
to  be  an  old  man,  very  seedily  dressed  in  what  soldiers  call  "citi- 
zens" clothes;  he  put  on  a  surplice  and  went  to  the  church  door 
with  his  sacristan,  a  Mexican  in  jacket,  and  with  the  heaviest 
and  blackest  hair  I  ever  saw,  and  baptized  the  little  baby  of  a 
humble  Mexican  couple.  There  was  a  look  of  feeble  melancholy 
in  the  priest's  face,  which  seemed  to  tell  the  truth  that  in  Mexico 
the  church  has  fallen  upon  evil  days.  The  laborer,  however,  is 
worthy  of  his  hire,  and  fortunately  in  this  case  the  hire  is  fixed, 
for  I  saw  on  the  wall  the  printed  permit  of  the  Archbishop  of 
Obispo,  giving  the  fees  to  be  charged  for  clerical  services ;  for 
baptism  so  much,  for  funerals  so  much,  and  so  on  to  the  end  of 
the  chapter. 

Near  the  church  was  a  little  half-ruined  plaza.  There  was  a 
low,  circular  wall  in  the  center,  which  had  sometime  perhaps  in- 
closed a  fountain;  there  were  stone  seats  all  around,  and  two 
rows  of  trees  and  little  ditches,  or  grooves  rather,  to  allow  the 
water  to  run  over  their  roots  and  keep  them  green.  I  dare  say 
that  under  the  tyrannical  rule  of  the  Spanish  Viceroys  the  people, 
young  and  old,  gathered  in  the  plaza  of  an  evening  and  were 


A   GLIMPSE   OF    MEXICO.  85 

happy;  but  with  freedom  came  eternal  revolution,  and  the  pleas- 
ure ground  fell  into  decay.  Perhaps  the  Yankee  will  come  and 
worship  his  god,  Politics,  in  this  plaza,  to  the  sound  of  trombones 
and  bass  tubas,  and  clarionets  and  ward  orators  and  other  wind 
instruments. 

On  Thursday  evening  we  rode  in  and  around  the  town,  and 
Gov.  Anthony  pointed  out  the  new  depot  of  the  Mexican  Cen- 
tral, which  is  to  be  a  fine  house,  built  of  adobes  with  a  placita, 
with  all  the  offices  opening  into  it;  and  there  was  also  a  new 
freight  house,  in  the  construction  of  which  the  lumber  of  half  a 
dozen  States  had  been  employed,  California  furnishing  the  red- 
wood shingles.  Then  there  were  the  big  locomotives  named  for 
the  Mexican  States,  the  " Zacatecas,"  the  "Jalisco,"  and  the 
others. 

The  common  Mexican  does  not  seem  at  home  in  towns,  nor  is 
he  a  success  as  a  town-builder,  but  give  him  a  little  plot  of 
ground  and  an  acequeia,  and  he  will  give  the  American  author 
of  "Ten  Acres  Enough"  half  a  dozen  points,  and  beat  him. 
How  pleasant  it  all  was :  the  gardens  and  the  big  pear  trees,  and 
the  vineyards,  and  the  little  squares  of  purple  alfalfa,  and  all 
the  people  out  of  doors  and  at  work,  for  the  water  is  let  into  the 
little  ditches  at  sunset.  It  was  a  picture  of  quiet  and  content- 
ment, though  boisterous  happiness  appears  unknown  in  this 
country.  There  is  a  subdued  look  about  all  animate  creatures, 
even  to  the  plump,  olive-skinned  children,  who  look  at  you  fix- 
edly with  unblinking  round  black  eyes  as  you  pass. 

From  this  evening  scene  a  feature  of  every  Mexican  landscape 
should  not  be  omitted,  to  wit,  the  goats,  who  come  in  a  compact 
mass,  brown  and  yellow  and  spotted,  down  the  dusty  lane,  at- 
tended by  their  swarthy  and  ragged  herdsman.  Mexico  would 
not  be  Mexico  without  the  burros,  the  curs  of  low  degree,  and 
the  goats.  These  are  indispensable. 

Returning  to  the  Texas  El  Paso  after  the  drive,  we  left  it  again 
in  the  early  light  of  the  next  (Friday)  morning  for  Chihuahua 
via  the  Central  Mexican  Railroad  as  far  as  Ojo-Laguna,  the  end  of 
the  track,  and  thence  by  the  company's  ambulance  to  the  objec- 
tive point.  We  started  from  the  "Santa  Fe"  depot,  the  track  of 
6 


86  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

the  A.  T.  &  S.  F.  connecting  with  the  Mexican  Central  in  the 
center  of  the  bridge  across  the  Rio  Grande.  The  Mexican  shore 
reached,  we  sped  along  on  our  journey  southwest.  The  road 
runs  almost  in  a  straight  line  south,  and  has  a  maximum  grade 
of  only  thirty-five  feet  to  the  mile.  The  route  seems  designed 
by  nature  for  a  railroad.  It  is,  for  the  most  part,  a  level  plain ; 
to  the  left  what  may  be  termed  a  range  of  high  hills;  to  the  right 
a  range  of  low  mountains,  the  order  being  occasionally  changed. 
The  ranges  are  broken  into  groups,  bearing  different  names,  the 
most  noticeable  being  the  Candelarias,  or  Candle  Mountains,  so 
called  from  the  signal  fires  of  the  Indians,  frequently  seen  flash- 
ing upon  the  peaks  at  night.  As  the  road  proceeds  southward 
the  country  grows  less  sandy,  till  at  the  plains  of  Encinillas  it 
may  be  called  a  fair  prairie.  All  the  streams  in  Northern  Chi- 
huahua empty  into  lakes,  or  lagunas,  which  have  no  visible  out- 
let. At  the  largest  one  of  these,  Ojo-Laguna,  we  found  the 
boarding-train  and  the  ambulance;  the  track  is  laid  three  or  four 
miles  farther,  and  the  grading  is  completed  to  Chihuahua. 

At  the  boarding-train  was  found  a  large  party,  mostly  Ameri- 
cans, though  a  few  slender  Mexicans  in  serapes  and  sandals 
served  to  form  a  contrast  with  the  burly  and  bearded  men  of  the 
North.  Dinner  eaten,  we  started  with  our  four-mule  ambulance 
to  cover  the  sixty  miles  that  lay  between  us  and  Chihuahua. 

The  road  for  the  most  part  was  an  excellent  one,  but  it  trav- 
erses a  solitude  for  many  miles.  Over  all  the  country  has  rested 
the  shadow  of  constant  danger.  For  in  the  canons  in  the  moun- 
tains has  lurked  the  merciless  Apache,  ready  at  some  unexpected 
moment  to  rush  or  steal  out  on  his  errand  of  plunder  or  murder. 
Every  mile  was  marked  by  some  story  of  his  cruelty.  But  his 
hour  has  come;  the  Mexican,  after  a  century  of  suffering,  has  at 
last  driven  his  enemy  to  bay,  and  hunts  him  to  death  in  his  moun- 
tain fastnesses.  Our  own  troops  are  powerless  in  face  of  the  res- 
ervation system,  which  offers  murderers  and  robbers  a  safe  asylum. 
In  Mexico  there  are  no  reservations. 

The  country  we  were  traversing  is  a  vast  cattle  range,  occupied 
by  the  herds  of  Governor  Terassas,  of  Chihuahua,  who  claims  an 
immense  region.  The  cattle  could  be  seen  far  and  near,  and  oc- 


A   GLIMPSE   OF    MEXICO.  .     87 

casionally  a  herd  crossed  the  road ;  a  bull  in  the  advance,  whose 
high  head  and  long  sharp  horns  recalled  the  pictures  of  Spanish 
bull  fights;  then  came  the  gaunt  black-and-white,  dun-and-yel- 
low  cows,  with  their  calves  by  their  sides.  In  thirty  miles  we 
saw  but  three  inhabited  places;  and  one  of  them,  the  ranch  of 
Encinillas,  with  its  little  church,  lay  miles  away  under  the 
shadow  of  the  mountain.  We  passed  near  the  two  others.  They 
were  virtually  forts  of  adobe,  each  with  its  round  tower  pierced 
with  loop-holes ;  near  each  was  a  corral  made  of  bush,  or  poles 
fastened  to  the  cross-pieces  with  thongs  of  rawhide.  A  solitary 
door  afforded  admission  to  the  placita;  the  long  line  of  outer 
walls  showed  no  openings  in  the  way  of  windows.  Everything 
of  value — wool,  hides,  wheat — is  kept  inside  the  walls.  It  has 
been  so  long  a  land  of  perpetual  danger  and  watchfulness. 

As  darkness  drew  on  we  saw  across  the  plain  the  four  white 
tents  of  the  engineer  party,  and  drove  over  there  for  supper. 
The  boys  were  found  in  comfortable  condition,  and  interested  in 
their  few  Mexican  neighbors.  They  told  some  curious  stories 
of  the  effects  of  the  yerba  loca,  or  mad-weed,  which  grows  in 
these  plains.  Two  of  their  mules  having  eaten  it  went  absolutely 
crazy,  and  suffered  from  swelled  heads  the  next  morning ;  yet, 
having  eaten  it  once,  eagerly  sought  for  it  again.  The  weed  ap- 
pears to  operate  on  mules  as  whisky  does  on  men.  I  was  sorry 
to  hear  of  the.  existence  of  such  a  plant ;  an  inebriated  mule 
around  a  camp  must  be  a  terrible  calamity. 

The  cloudy  night  had  settled  down  when  we  resumed  our  soli- 
tary way.  There  was  no  sound  except  the  clatter  of  the  hoofs 
of  our  mules  and  the  crunching  of  the  wheels  in  the  gravel.  A 
barking  of  dogs  heralded  our  approach  to  the  few  houses  called 
Sacramento,  where  there  was  once  a  show  of  fight  between  our 
troops  and  the  Mexicans  in  the  old  "Mexican  war;"  then  all  was 
still  again  for  miles  and  miles.  Then  we  saw  a  light;  at  times  it 
seemed  directly  in  front;  then  it  appeared  on  one  side  or  the 
other;  now  we  are  bearing  down  upon  it;  it  is  at  the  end  of  a 
long,  straight  avenue;  we  shall  reach  it  presently;  no,  it  is  re- 
ceding ;  perhaps  it  is  but  a  star ;  no,  here  it  is  again.  So  with 
weary  eyes  we  watched  the  light  Now  it  shines,  clear  and  well 


88  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

defined.  It  is  a  street  lamp ;  it  throws  its  gleam  on  the  front  of 
some  buildings.  We  pass  under  the  over-hanging  boughs  of 
trees;  we  rattle  over  a  stone  bridge;  the  blank  walls  of  houses 
arise,  white,  ghostly,  vague,  on  either  hand  in  the  light  of  lamps 
few  and  far  between.  The  sharp  cry  of  a  sentry  comes  out  of 
the  dark,  "Quien  vive?"  "  Amigos"  is  the  reply,  and  we  pass 
on.  Here  is  an  open  space;  lamps  gleam  through  trees  and 
shrubbery ;  high  up  between  the  towers  of  a  church  shines  an 
illuminated  clock  face;  the  brazen  clangor  of  a  bell  drops  down 
from  the  height;  it  is  3  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  this  is  the 
plaza  of  Chihuahua. 


SOMETHING  ABOUT  CHIHUAHUA. 


THE  city  of  Chihuahua,  which  in  a  few  weeks  will  be  as  access- 
ible to  the  people  of  the  United  States  as  New  York  and  Phila- 
delphia, is  situated  224  miles,  by  rail,  south  of  El  Paso,  Texas, 
and  900  miles  north  of  the  City  of  Mexico,  with  which  it  will 
be  connected  by  rail  within  two  years. 

It  is  the  largest  city  in  the  extreme  Northern  Mexico,  has  had 
a  brilliant  past,  and  seems  destined  to  a  prosperous  future.  It 
will  be  visited  within  the  next  twelve  months  by  thousands  of 
Western  people  —  including  a  large  proportion  of  Kansans  — 
drawn  by  business,  pleasure,  and  curiosity. 

Chihuahua  is  the  capital  of  the  State  of  Chihuahua,  the  north- 
eastern State  of  the  Republic  of  Mexico;  it  is  the  seat  of  justice 
for  the  county  of  Iturbide,  and  the  military  headquarters  of  the 
department  at  present  commanded  by  Gen.  Fuero.  It  is  the  site 
of  a  Government  mint,  and  generally  the  political  and  commer- 
cial capital  of  the  North.  It  is  the  first  point  reached  by  the 
great  Mexican  Central  Railway,  (an  extension  of  the  Atchison, 
Topeka  &  Santa  Fe  system,)  and  no  city  of  importance  will  ever 
be  built  within  two  hundred  miles  of  it  in  any  direction. 

Chihuahua  has  a  municipal  government,  the  present  mayor 
being  Don  Juan  N.  Zubiran,  for  many  years  the  Mexican  consul 
at  El  Paso,  Texas,  and  one  of  the  most  progressive  of  the  public 
men  of  Mexico.  He  speaks  and  writes  English  with  fluency, 
and  is  the  friend  of  every  respectable  American  who  comes  to 
Chihuahua.  He  is  an  encyclopedia  of  Mexican  history  and  pol- 
itics; has  known  every  Mexican  political  or  military  chief  of 
prominence  from  the  days  of  Santa  Anna,  and  was  the  devoted 
personal  friend  of  the  late  President  Juarez.  Kindly,  affable,  a 
friend  of  popular  education,  he  has  laid  the  city  of  Chihuahua 

(89) 


90  SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 

under  everlasting  obligations,  and  is  the  creditor  of  a  large  num- 
ber of  foreigners  for  information  extended. 

Chihuahua  is  well  paved,  has  waterworks  of  an  ancient  pattern, 
and  is  lighted  with  naptha  lamps ;  it  has  several  hotels,  mostly 
frequented  by  Americans;  two  American  barber  shops,  and  one 
bootblack  of  native  origin.  It  has  banks,  stores  of  all  kinds,  a 
theater,  a  plaza  de  toros,  from  which  the  bulls  and  matadors  have 
however  departed,  and  which  is  occupied  at  present  by  a  Mexi- 
can circus  company,  which  performs  every  Sunday.  The  clown 
speaks  Spanish,  and  is  therefore  unable  to  bore  Americans. 

Historically,  Chihuahua  may  be  said  to  be  a  comparatively 
modern  place,  for  a  Spanish-American  city.  It  lays  no  such 
claim  to  antiquity  as  Santa  Fe  or  several  other  towns  in  New 
Mexico.  It  was  in  fact  as  Senor  Zubiran  says,  "nothing  but 
grasshoppers,"  until  1702,  when  the  great  silver  mine  of  Santa 
Eulalia  attracted  attention  to  the  neighborhood.  The  town  grew 
after  the  fashion  of  mining  towns  in  other  times  and  centuries, 
and  in  1718,  by  royal  authority,  the  settlement  was  organized  as 
a  village,  under  the  name  of  San  Francisco  de  Chihuahua.  The 
immense  richness  of  the  mines,  the  fact  that  there  was  no  other 
town  of  importance  within  hundreds  of  miles,  and  the  wealth  and 
energy  of  its  inhabitants,  combined  to  make  Chihuahua  a  marvel 
of  prosperity.  Other  colonies  and  towns  were  the  outgrowth  of 
missions,  and  were  located  on  the  site  of  Indian  pueblos.  Chi- 
huahua sprang  into  existence  under  the  shadow  of  its  mountain, 
El  Coronel  ("The  Colonel")*  the  product  of  mining  and  com- 
merce. When  Capt.  Zebulon  M.  Pike  was  detained  here  a  pris- 
oner in  1806,  he  found  a  fine  city  of  60,000  people.  It  is  well 
authenticated  that  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century  the  town  had 
70,000  inhabitants.  Its  rulers  were  merchants  and  mine  owners. 
It  was  also  a  manufacturing  town,  and  within  the  last  fifty  years 
articles  from  the  State  of  Chihuahua  were  sold  in  great  quantities 
at  Santa  Fe. 

The  era  of  greatest  prosperity  was  probably  reached  about 
1727,  when  the  great  church  on  the  plaza,  called  the  Cathedral  — 
but  which  it  is  not,  as  Chihuahua  has  not  and  never  has  had  a 


SOMETHING   ABOUT   CHIHUAHUA.  91 

bishop  —  was  commenced.  It  was  built  as  the  parish  church  of 
Chihuahua  by  the  business  men  of  the  city,  out  of  a  fund  raised 
by  a  contribution  of  12J  cents  on  each  mark,  or  eight  ounces,  of 
silver  produced  in  the  vicinity.  Commenced  in  1727,  the  ex- 
terior was  completed  in  1741 ;  the  interior  was  not  finished  till 
1761.  The  building  proper  cost  $600,000 ;  of  the  cost  of  the 
interior  no  one  presumes  to  make  an  estimate.  In  those  days 
the  banks  of  the  little  river  Chuvisca,  which  flows  by  the  town, 
were  lined  with  smelters  and  reduction  works,  and  immense 
piles  of  waste  can  still  be  traced  for  miles.  Outside  of  the  pres- 
ent city  the  foundations  of  ancient  houses  can  be  traced,  scattered 
over  a  large  district.  Here  was  a  great  city,  enormous  in  its 
wealth,  with  its  fine  Alameda  thronged  with  pleasure-seekers 
every  morning  and  evening,  and  yet  as  utterly  shut  out  from 
every  foreign  country  as  if  it  had  been  situated  in  the  interior 
of  Africa.  The  Spanish  erected  a  more  than  Chinese  wall  about 
the  country.  Within  a  few  years  it  has  required  two  months 
for  a  letter  to  reach  Chihuahua  from  the  United  States. 

When  the  decline  of  Chihuahua  began,  is  hard  to  state;  proba- 
bly with  the  abandonment  of  the  policy  of  enslaving  the  Indians 
and  working  them  in  the  mines.  The  staggering  blow  was  dealt 
by  the  Mexican  revolution,  which  lasted  from  1810  to  1821. 
This  eleven  years  of  war  was  followed  by  the  years  of  perpetual 
revolution,  which  have  now  happily  ended.  The  Spaniard 
worked  no  mines  except  by  slave  labor;  now  comes  the  Ameri- 
can with  his  mighty  slave,  steam,  which  performs  the  work  of 
millions  of  bondmen,  and  the  restoration  of  Mexico  and  of 
Chihuahua  is  at  hand.  After  all  the  backsets  and  calamities, 
the  town  is  still  estimated  to  contain  19,000  people.  Most  of  its 
public  buildings  have  survived  the  shocks  of  time  and  revolu- 
tion. 

Chihuahua,  nine  hundred  miles  from  the  City  of  Mexico,  the 
political  center,  has  yet  had  its  share  in  the  wars  of  the  country. 
The  people  bore  an  honorable  part  in  the  struggle  for  independ- 
ence, and  in  this  city  occurred  the  saddest  tragedy  of  the  revo- 
lution, the  murder  of  Hidalgo.  Amid  all  the  bitter  contentions 
of  Mexican  politics,  no  voice  has  ever  been  raised  against  the 


92  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

character  of  Hidalgo.  A  scholar  and  a  priest,  he  first  distin- 
guished himself  by  his  efforts  in  behalf  of  his  parishioners;  he 
introduced  among  them  the  silk-worm  and  the  honey-bee.  Al- 
though allied  by  his  profession  and  his  family  to  the  ruling 
class,  he  yet  raised  in  the  face  of  what  seemed  resistless  power 
the  standard  of  revolt.  He  foretold  his  own  fate,  saying  that  it 
was  the  fortune  of  men  who  inaugurated  revolutions  to  perish  in 
them.  After  the  disastrous  battle  of  the  Bridge  of  Calderon, 
Hidalgo  was  captured  and  brought  to  Chihuahua,  where  he  was 
shot  within  the  walls  of  the  Hospital  Real.  He  died  with  the 
utmost  resolution;  giving  his  gold  watch  to  the  jailer,  and  divid- 
ing what  coin  he  had  about  his  person  among  the  firing  party, 
to  whom  he  said:  "I  will  place  my  hand  upon  my  breast;  it 
will  serve  as  the  mark  at  which  you  are  to  fire."  The  hospital 
has  been  nearly  all  torn  down  to  make  room  for  a  new  govern- 
ment building  now  in  course  of  erection.  A  monument  has 
been  erected  near  the  spot  of  his  execution,  but  it  bears  no  in- 
scription; no  carved  word  or  line  is  needed  to  remind  Mexicans 
that  here  died  the  purest  and  most  unselfish  man  whose  name 
has  yet  adorned  the  annals  of  Mexico.  His  head  is  engraved 
on  the  postal  stamps  of  the  country,  and  on  the  walls  of  the 
council  chamber  of  Chihuahua  hangs  his  portrait,  with  those  of 
Morelos,  Guerrero,  Juarez,  and  General  Mejia,  Minister  of  War 
to  the  latter.  It  is  sad  but  true  that  in  the  long  line  of  public 
men  who  have  figured  in  Mexico  the  names  of  Hidalgo  and 
Juarez  alone  seem  to  receive  universal  veneration.  Hidalgo 
died  with  his  work  hardly  begun,  but  Juarez  lived  to  see  his 
country  freed  from  the  invader,  and  every  substantial  reform 
now  doing  its  beneficent  work  in  Mexico  is  the  result  of  his 
labors  and  counsels. 

During  the  invasion  of  the  French,  Juarez,  driven  from  his 
capital,  resided  for  a  year  in  Chihuahua.  Congress  had  delegated 
all  its  powers  to  him.  He  was  the  government.  The  French 
twice  occupied  Chihuahua;  the  second  time  they  were  driven 
out.  At  one  time  so  desperate  were  the  fortunes  of  the  Republic 
that  Juarez  took  refuge  in  Paso  del  Norte,  but  he  never  aban- 
doned Mexican  territory.  During  his  stay  at  El  Paso  the  ex- 


SOMETHING   ABOUT   CHIHUAHUA.  93 

penses  of  the  government  are  said  to  have  been  thirty  dollars  a 
day,  a  sum  which  was  contributed  by  the  citizens  of  Chihuahua. 

Chihuahua  has  had  two  revolutions,  but  appears  to  have  been 
fairly  governed  except  during  the  reign  of  a  drunken  vagabond, 
Gen.  Angel  Trias,  who  destroyed  one  of  the  finest  churches  in 
the  city  and  committed  other  depredations.  The  present  Gov- 
ernor, Don  Luis  Terassas,  has  been  in  power  a  long  time,  and  is 
said  to  be  liberal  in  his  views.  His  brother,  Col.  Terassas,  distin- 
guished himself  in  the  destruction  of  Victorio  and  his  murdering 
Indians. 

Chihuahua  is  to  some  extent  an  adobe  town,  but  the  public 
buildings  and  principal  edifices  are  built  in  a  great  measure  of  a 
stone  obtained  from  a  quarry  three  miles  from  town,  which  in 
texture  resembles  the  magnesian  limestone  found  in  Kansas,  but 
in  color  somewhat  resembles  the  Caen  stone  so  much  used  for 
building  in  Paris. 

The  society  in  Chihuahua  is  at  present  largely  Mexican.  There 
are  a  few  foreigners  who  have  long  been  domiciled  here,  have  in- 
termarried with  Mexican  families,  and  have  exercised  a  great  in- 
fluence. 

Henrique  Miiller,  a  German,  was  for  many  years  a  ruler  in 
Chihuahua.  The  family  of  Macmanus,  originally  from  Carlisle, 
Pennsylvania,  has  been  in  Chihuahua  for  forty  years,  and  the 
second  generation  is  now  in  business  here.  Many  people  antici- 
pate a  complete  revolution,  social  and  otherwise,  with  the  coming 
of  the  Mexican  Central  Railroad,  but  what  I  have  seen  of  the 
survival  of  the  Mexican  habits  and  customs  in  New  Mexico, 
after  over  thirty  years  of  American  rule,  leads  me  to  think  that 
it  will  be  several  years  before  Chihuahua  ceases  to  be  to  Ameri- 
cans a  foreign  city  in  many  things. 

The  altitude  of  Chihuahua  counteracts  the  latitude.  Here,  in 
the  last  quarter  of  May,  the  weather  is  like  the  June  of  Kansas,  with 
a  few  hours  of  July  in  the  middle  of  the  day.  There  is  nothing 
in  the  atmosphere  or  the  vegetation  to  suggest  an  extreme  south- 
ern, much  less  tropical,  climate.  The  flowers  here  are  the  lark- 
Spurs  and  hollyhocks  and  roses,  the  commrn  garden  flowers  of 
New  England.  This  all  changes,  however,  in  the  rainy  season. 


94  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

Kansas  people  who  are  not  in  a  hurry  will  enjoy  a  visit  to 
Chihuahua,  merely  as  a  visit.  If  they  are  on  business  intent, 
and  wish  to  rush  things,  they  had  better  leave  the  city  and  go  to 
prospecting.  In  Chihuahua  as  far  as  I  have  observed  no  one  is 
in  a  hurry.  I  have  never  seen  a  town  with  such  facilities  for 
sitting  down.  There  are  seats  on  the  plaza,  seats  all  along  the 
Alameda,  and  stone  benches  on  all  the  placitas.  These  are  not 
at  all  necessary  for  the  ordinary  Mexican,  male  or  female,  for  he 
or  she  takes  a  seat  on  the  sidewalk  whenever  repose  is  required. 
The  American  out  of  a  job  travels  incessantly;  even  the  profes- 
sional loafer  moves  or  tramps;  but  the  Mexican,  when  there  is 
nothing  urgent  on  hand,  takes  a  seat.  Americans  must  make  up 
their  minds  to  this,  and  not  get  excited,  since  it  will  effect  nothing. 

The  people  of  Chihuahua,  as  far  as  my  observation  goes,  and 
as  far  as  I  can  learn  from  others,  are  extremely  civil.  The  rowdy 
and  the  hoodlum  do  not  seem  to  be  native  to  Chihuahua.  The 
men  do  not  carry  knives  and  daggers,  nor  do  they  stick  them  in 
the  backs  of  Americans,  as  commonly  represented.  The  vices  of 
the  Mexican  character,  of  which  we  hear  so  much,  appear  to  be 
carefully  concealed,  as  far  as  strangers  are  concerned.  In  a  some- 
what extensive  acquaintance  with  public  grounds  in  various  cities 
and  countries,  I  have  never  known  a  more  orderly,  perhaps  it 
would  better  to  say,  courteous  place,  than  the  plaza  in  Chihua- 
hua at  night. 

Whether  an  American  can  enjoy  himself  as  a  mere  looker-on 
here,  depends  on  his  temperament.  If  he  is  easy-going,  tolerant, 
willing  to  submit  to  a  state  of  things  different  from  that  existing 
at  Jonesville  Four  Corners,  U.  S.  A  ;  if  he  is  curious  about  an 
ancient  civilization,  different  from  our  own ;  if  he  wishes  to  see  a 
Southern  European  city  without  crossing  the  ocean,  he  will  find 
it  in  Chihuahua. 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  CHIHUAHUA. 


THE  center  of  Chihuahua  is  the  plaza.  There  is  a  ruined  por- 
tion of  the  town  called  "Old  Chihuahua,"  but  it  is  certain  that 
this  plaza  is  as  old  as  anything  in  the  city.  It  is  now,  as  it  al- 
ways has  been,  the  joy  and  pride  of  the  town,  this  little  square 
of  green.  In  appearance  it  is  somewhat  modernized;  it  was 
originally  planted  in  orange  trees,  which  were  killed  some  years 
ago  by  the  frost,  and  handsome  young  ash  trees  now  fill  their 
places.  There  are  beds  of  common  garden  flowers,  larkspurs, 
hollyhocks,  petunias,  verbenas  and  the  like,  trellises  covered  with 
vines,  and  in  the  center  there  is  a  bronze  fountain,  which  sup- 
plies the  place  of  an  antique  stone-work.  The  aqueduct,  a  very 
ancient  construction,  is  out  of  order,  yet  the  bronze  swans  of  the 
fountain  pour  out  little  streams  from  their  bills,  and  keep  up  a 
continual  splashing,  and  partially  fill  the  basin.  From  the  ear- 
liest light  of  morning  till  far  into  the  night  a  crowd  of  women 
and  girls  are  coming  to  or  going  from  the  fountain  with  earthen 
jars,  such  as  you  see  in  pictures  of  "Rebecca  at  the  Well;" 
there  are  also  porters,  who  carry  away  little  barrels  of  water 
slung  on  a  pole  between  them.  Whatever  stillness  may  linger 
around  the  rest  of  Chihuahua,  it  is  always  busy  about  the  foun- 
tain. There  are  seats  of  bronzed  iron  around  the  plaza,  and 
they  are  always  occupied,  day  and  night.  When  the  sun  has  set 
the  promenade  commences.  The  major  part  of  the  promenaders 
are  young  ladies,  sometimes  attended  by  an  elderly  female; 
oftener  alone;  very  seldom  in  the  company  of  gentlemen.  In 
many  a  northern  city  they  would  be  exposed  to  rudeness.  Noth- 
ing of  the  kind  occurs  in  Chihuahua.  I  have  never  seen  so  uni- 
versally decorous  a  people.  To  romp,  to  talk  loud,  even  in 
innocent  glee,  is  quite  unknown ;  all  questions  are  exchanged  in 

(95) 


96  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

a  low  voice.  To  be  reposeful  and  quiet  seems  to  be  the  Mexican 
idea  of  good  breeding. 

On  the  plaza,  facing  the  east,  is  the  great  church,  La  Parrochia. 
It  has  two  towers  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  high.  The  towers 
are  built  in  four  receding  stories,  of  columns  of  a  graceful  de- 
sign. The  facade  between  the  towers  is  a  mass  of  carving  of  in- 
tricate pattern,  and  in  niches  are  thirteen  life-size  figures  of  saints, 
while  on  the  crest  stands  the  winged  Santiago,  patron  of  Spain. 
There  are  entrances  on  the  north  and  south,  each  set  in  a  mass  of 
carved  work.  Over  the  altar  is  a  massive  dome,  which  supplies 
light  to  the  church.  In  the  towers  are  chimes  of  bells,  and  bells 
are  hung  at  every  coigne  of  vantage,  and  these  bells  are  eternally 
in  motion.  When  the  clock  strikes  the  hour,  two  bells  supple- 
ment its  information,  and  about  once  in  fifteen  minutes  all  the 
bells  are  set  going  with  a  deafening  clangor.  This  being  the 
month  of  May,  sacred  to  the  Virgin,  services  are  held  with  un- 
usual frequency.  The  interior  of  the  church  is  striking  from  its 
height  and  vastness,  but  for  no  other  reason.  The  pictures  are 
revolting.  In  no  country  have  I  seen  the  sufferings  of  Christ  de- 
picted with  such  brutal  fidelity.  There  are  crucifixes  in  these 
old  Mexican  churches,  where  the  wounds,  the  bruises,  the  rigidity 
of  death,  the  clotted  blood,  affected  me  as  if  I  had  suddenly  dis- 
covered a  murdered  corse  in  the  woods.  The  high  altar  is  of 
immense  proportions,  so  that  it  is  ascended  by  stairs,  but  it  is  a 
mass  of  gilt  paper,  artificial  flowers,  and  mirrors,  of  which  these 
people  of  the  South  appear  to  be  so  exceedingly  fond. 

Such  is  the  great  church  of  Chihuahua.  I  have  many  times 
stepped  in  while  service  was  in  progress,  and  have  noted  what 
may  be  seen  in  every  Spanish- American  country  —  the  vast  ma- 
jority of  women  among  the  worshippers.  They  knelt  or  sat  upon 
the  floor  by  hundreds,  while  the  men  could  be  counted  by  scores; 
and  many  of  them  left  before  the  service  was  over.  The  priest 
of  La  Parrochia  is  a  marked  figure  as  he  goes  about  the  streets 
with  a  robe  of  black,  with  a  cape  like  that  of  an  army  over- 
coat. He  is  a  man  of  wealth  and  imperious  bearing,  and  in  his 
look  reminds  me  somewhat  of  the  first  Napoleon.  The  same 


RECOLLECTIONS   OF   CHIHUAHUA.  97 

Napoleonic  head  is  seen  in  the  pictures  of  Morelos,  the  priest 
?ho  led  the  Mexican  struggle  for  independence  after  the  death 
of  Hidalgo.  Down  a  long,  narrow  street  that  leads  out  of  the 
plaza  is  the  Casa  de  Moneda,  or  mint,  with  its  tower  in  which 
Hidalgo  was  imprisoned.  Soldiers  are  always  on  guard  here, 
and  further  down  are  the  barracks.  There  are  about  one  thou- 
sand men  in  garrison  in  Chihuahua.  These  troops  are  from  the 
Gulf  coast.  The  men  are  much  darker  than  the  inhabitants  of 
Chihuahua,  and  in  fact  many  of  them  are  pure  Indians.  The 
infantry  wear  a  linen  jacket  and  pantaloons,  and  a  round  leather 
hat  with  a  red  pompon.  They  are  armed  with  breech-loaders. 
They  are  drilled  entirely  with  the  bugle,  and  move  with  reason- 
able steadiness.  They  are  not  as  robust  physically  as  the  Amer- 
icans, English,  or  Germans,  but  they  are  larger  than  the  average 
French  infantryman.  They  live  on  little,  and  are  said  to  be 
rapid  and  far  marchers.  Well  led,  they  ought  to  be  fair  soldiers. 
The  cavalry  are  better  clad,  wearing  a  dark-blue  uniform,  a  copy 
of  the  French,  and  wide  white  shoulder  belts.  Those  I  have  seen 
rode  indifferently,  perhaps  because  they  were  incumbered  with 
the  iron  war  club  technically  called  a  cavalry  saber.  The  offi- 
cers of  both  are  handsomely  uniformed  in  dark  blue,  with  trim- 
mings of  scarlet  and  silver.  Some  of  these  troops  have  been 
stationed  on  the  frontier,  and  have  acquired  so  much  of  the 
English  language  as  is  necessary  in  the  transaction  of  their  "  reg- 
ular business ; "  at  least  one  of  them  has  asked  me  in  an  intelli- 
gible manner  for  a  dime  to  buy  a  drink  of  whisky. 

In  Chihuahua  soldiers  do  not  have  a  monopoly  of  conspicuous 
clothes.  Variety  in  unity  is  the  Mexican  motto.  Occasionally 
a  gentleman  from  the  country  is  met  whose  costume  apparently 
consists  of  a  shirt  and  a  pair  of  drawers;  but  the  general  "rig" 
of  the  lower  order  of  the  male  persuasion  is  a  pair  of  pantaloons 
cut  off  about  six  inches  above  the  feet,  with  a  white  cotton  exten- 
sion from  there  down,  a  jacket,  a  sombrero  of  straw,  and  around 
the  shoulders  the  serape.  This  much-talked-of  garment  is  largely 
manufactured  in  Chihuahua.  It  is  simply  a  coarse  blanket,  and 
looks  like  a  gay-colored  piece  of  rag  carpet.  The  articles  known 
in  the  rural  districts  of  the  United  States  as  "galluses"  are  not 


98  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

in  vogue  in  Mexico,  consequently  many  of  the  men  gird  them- 
selves with  a  white  handkerchief,  which  hangs  down  in  triangular 
shape  behind,  producing  a  not  very  imposing  effect.  Among  the 
poorest  people  shoes  are  not  worn,  but  instead  sandals  of  rawhide. 
Mexico  is  a  country  of  grades,  and  from  these  Mexicans  in  serapes 
and  sandals  to  the  rich  rulers  of  society  it  is  a  long  way.  These 
last,  in  many  instances,  are  ultra-fashionables  in  the  matter  of 
clothes,  and  the  old  Mexican  dress  is  seldom  worn.  Young  men 
sometimes  wear  it  when  riding  on  the  Alameda.  It  seems  to  me 
handsome  and  graceful.  The  silver-banded  sombrero,  the  short 
jacket,  and  the  pantaloons  trimmed  down  the  seams  with  gold  or 
silver  buttons  and  braid,  does  not  seem  theatrical  when  you  see 
it  commonly  worn.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  red  or  purple 
sash  or  waist-belt.  That  bit  of  color  seems  the  mark  of  the  com- 
mon Latin  man  the  world  over.  It  is  worn  by  French-Canadian 
lumbermen,  by  Italian  and  Portugese  sailors,  and  by  Mexican 
laborers  and  herdsmen. 

The  grand  gathering-place  of  all  the  Chihuahua  people,  old 
and  young,  is  the  Alameda,  so  called,  I  suppose,  from  the  alamo, 
or  cottonwood.  It  must  originally  have  extended  half  around 
the  town,  from  the  river  to  the  river  again;  and  Pike  speaks  of 
the  promenade  as  existing  in  1806.  Four  rows  of  cottonwoods 
make  the  Alameda,  and  many  of  the  trees  now  standing  are  over 
one  hundred  years  old.  Their  gnarled  roots  run  along  on  top 
of  the  ground,  twining  with  each  other  in  many  a  fantastic  fold. 
The  place  of  many  primeval  cottonwoods  has  been  supplied  with 
others,  and  may  the  shadow  of  the  Alameda  never  grow  less.  All 
along  either  side  are  stone  benches  of  unknown  age,  on  which 
successive  generations  of  Chihuahuans  have  rested.  Men  born 
in  a  cold  climate  are  prone  to  dash  about  in  the  sun,  and  risk  sun- 
stroke; natives  of  a  hot  country  never  do.  Consequently,  if  you 
would  see  the  Alameda  in  its  glory,  you  must  see  it  in  the  early 
morning  or  later  eve.  It  is  a  pretty  sight  in  the  fresh,  cool  morn- 
ing to  see  the  crowded  Alameda,  the  ladies  seated  on  the  stone 
sofas,  watching  the  carriages  as  they  drive  slowly  along,  or  the 
groups  of  the  young  bloods  of  Chihuahua,  mounted  on  fine  horses, 
with  saddles  of  the  most  elaborate  pattern.  A  pendent  housing 


RECOLLECTIONS   OF   CHIHUAHUA.  99 

of  goat-skin  is  very  fashionable,  and  is  quite  showy.  All  is  quiet ! 
The  carriages  move  slowly ;  the  horsemen  ride  in  a  measured  pace; 
nobody  gallops,  nobody  whoops;  the  band  plays  gentle,  plaintive 
airs;  and  the  spectators  —  they  just  sit  still  and  look  idly  happy. 

On  the  Alameda  may  be  seen  the  beauty  of  Chihuahua;  and 
here  is  a  good  place  to  speak  of  the  question  of  the  existence  of 
"the  beautiful  Senorita."  Many  Americans  traveling  in  New 
Mexico  come  back  swearing  that  the  "beautiful  Senorita "  is  a 
myth.  But  such  would  change  their  minds  in  Chihuahua.  There 
the  beautiful  Spanish  eye  and  the  mass  of  glossy  hair  of  mid- 
night blackness  is  the  almost  universal  heritage  of  the  women. 
You  may  walk  the  Alameda  for  a  mile  and  never  see  a  tress  of 
brown  or  gold,  or  any  hue  save  the  blackest  of  all  blacks.  There 
is  every  variety  of  complexion,  though  there  seems  to  be  a  gen- 
eral sameness  of  feature.  There  are  girls  as  brown  as  Arabs,  and 
girls  whose  faces  seem  like  faintly-clouded  ivory,  and  these  last 
are  blessed  with  features  such  as  one  sees  on  cameos.  The  fault  — 
and  it  is  a  general  one  —  is  a  lack  of  expression.  The  face,  at 
church,  on  the  plaza,  on  the  Alameda,  everywhere,  is  the  same. 
The  large,  dark  eyes  seem  watching  the  world  go  by,  too  indiffer- 
ent to  kindle  with  a  smile  or  sparkle  with  a  tear. 

The  children  under  four  years  old  are  almost  universally 
plump  and  pretty.  I  have  seen  in  front  of  the  poorest  adobe 
huts  in  Chihuahua,  little  half-clad  girls  playing,  whose  beauty 
would  make  them  the  pride  of  any  Northern  household;  but 
meagerness  and  age  come  early,  and  with  age,  among  the  poorer 
classes,  comes  hideousness. 

With  this  last  word  comes  the  recollection  of  the  beggars  of 
Chihuahua,  and  yet  there  is  nothing  very  hideous  about  them. 
When  it  is  one's  business  to  be  miserable  it  is  in  order  to  look  as 
miserable  as  possible,  and  this  the  Mexican  beggar  does.  He  is 
wrapped  up  in  an  absolute  overcoat  of  woe.  I  liked  him  much 
better  than  the  truculent,  bullying,  stand-and-deliver  beggar  of 
our  country.  There  is  a  melancholy  music  in  his  voice,  and  he 
is  such  a  Christian,  withal.  He  asks  assistance  in  the  name  of 
our  blessed  Lady  of  Guadaloupe,  with  the  remark  that  were  that 
blessed  personage  on  earth,  she  herself  would  help  him,  but  as 


100  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

she  is  gone  he  is  obliged  to  ask  help  of  the  passing  gentleman, 
whose  life  may  God  spare  to  illimitable  years.  I  saw  a  miser- 
able-looking old  man  take  the  proffered  handful  of  copper,  raise 
the  money  to  his  lips  and  kiss  it;  then  lift  his  eyes  heavenward 
and  murmur  a  benediction  on  the  giver.  It  was  all  acting, 
probably,  but  it  was  beautifully  done.  The  well-to-do  people  are 
kind  to  the  beggars.  Saturday  is  the  regular  beggars'  day,  and 
many  of  the  business  houses  make  regular  provision,  not  of 
money,  but  of  food  for  them.  I  presume  it  is  from  religious  sen- 
timent, or  that  sentiment  hardened  into  custom. 

Gentlemen,  ladies,  soldiers,  countrymen,  beggars,  and  divers 
other  persons  have  been  noticed,  and  we  will  speak  of  the  streets 
— the  scenery,  so  to  speak. 

There  is  a  noticeable  absence  of  life  and  stir,  but  this  is  more 
in  appearance  than  reality.  It  takes  a  stranger  some  time  to 
learn  that  the  houses  face  in,  and  not  out.  The  court,  or  placita, 
is  the  center  of  household  life,  and  of  that  you  can  catch  only  a 
glimpse  from  the  walk.  In  Chihuahua  the  placitas  are  full  of 
flowering  plants,  in  the  universal  earthen  jars,  and  moreover  are 
the  homes  of  countless  mocking-birds  in  gayly-painted  wicker 
cages.  Going  along  in  the  afternoon  on  the  shady  side  of  the 
street,  one  hears  flowing  out  of  the  street  door,  half  ajar,  a  rip- 
pling flood  of  melody  from  the  cages  among  the  figs  and  olean- 
ders. It  makes  you  think  of  Keats's  nightingale,  "singing  of 
summer  in  full-throated  ease." 

When  you  go  to  the  post  office  in  Chihuahua,  you  go  into  a 
placita  full  of  birds  and  flowers,  and  come  around  into  a  small 
room  where  there  are  two  or  three  clerks.  It  seems  like  a  pri- 
vate office.  The  clerk  looks  over  a  pile  of  undelivered  letters, 
and  gives  you  your  own.  It  is  very  home-like,  but  unbusiness-like, 
and  will  all  be  changed  soon. 

There  is  little  rumbling  of  wheels  in  the  paved  streets.  There 
are  stages,  omnibuses  and  pleasure  carriages,  but  not  the  crowd 
of  farm  wagons  one  sees  in  Kansas.  Instead,  there  are  certain 
streets  devoted  to  the  awfullest-looking  carts,  with  wheels  of  solid 
wood,  drawn  by  droves  of  oxen  or  herds  of  mules.  They  hitch 
the  beasts  on  four  abreast  until  the  load  starts.  Everything  on 


RECOLLECTIONS   OF   CHIHUAHUA.  101 

these  carts,  whatever  the  load  may  be,  is  done  up  in  a  yucca  mat- 
ting, or  in  rawhide.  Otherwise  the  rough  roads  would  jolt  it  to  de- 
struction. There  are  droves  of  burros  loaded  with  wood,  adobe^f 
and  stones  for  the  public  building.  The  milkman  goes  his  rounds 
on  a  burro.  The  cans  are  suspended  in  a  wicker  basket  on  either 
side,  and  the  milkman  sits  away  aft  on  the  animal's  back  piazza. 
The  burro  is  the  great  factor  in  business  life  in  Mexico.  If  he 
should  use  his  ears  for  wings  and  fly  away,  the  country  would  be 
paralyzed.  He  is  miserably  clubbed,  and  his  feed  is  an  illusion, 
but  I  am  inclined  to  think  he  likes  it.  A  burro  transplanted  to 
Kansas  to  live  on  full  rations,  and  with  nothing  to  do  but  carry 
round-legged  children  about,  ought  to  feel  himself  in  heaven,  but 
if  you  look  at  him  you  will  see  homesickness  in  his  countenance. 
He  is  longing  for  somebody  to  hit  him  with  a  rock  and  swear  at 
him  in  Spanish. 

Signs  are  not  as  numerous  as  with  us,  but  as  we  have  the  "  Dew 
Drop  In"  saloon,  and  the  English  have  the  "Bull  and  Mouth" 
tavern,  so  the  Mexican  indulges  in  the  barber  shop  of  "  Progress" 
and  the  grocery  store  of  "  The  Sun  of  May."  Most  charming  was 
the  candor  of  a  juice  vender  near  the  plaza,  whose  sign  announced 
the  "Little  Hell "  saloon.  Governor  St.  John  would  have  thought 
this  everlastingly  appropriate. 

Such  are  a  few  of  the  sights  of  Chihuahua;  little  things,  it  is 
true,  but  things  that  attract  the  attention  of  a  stranger  and  linger 
in  his  memory.  Much  more  might  be  said  in  the  same  vein,  par- 
ticularly in  regard  to  the  big  two-days  fiesta  and  its  sights  and 
sounds. 

Saying  nothing  of  its  commercial  importance,  in  the  days  when 
the  great  tide  of  travel  sets  into  Mexico,  Chihuahua  will  be  an 
interesting  town  to  visitors  from  the  North,  in  the  same  way  that 
Chester  is  to  Americans  in  England,  because  it  is  the  first  old 
foreign  city  reached.  For  that  reason  I  half  hope  the  old  place 
will  not  be  utterly  "  done  over  "  by  the  "  march  of  improvement." 
I  am  sure  I  shall  not  forget  a  word  of  it.  The  great  church  with 
its  noisy  bells,  the  plaza,  the  Alameda,  the  stores  where  all  the 
goods  seemed  red  or  yellow,  the  liquor  shops  with  splendid  shelves 
filled  with  bottles  of  colored  water,  the  soldiers,  the  porters  with 
7 


102  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

their  big  loads,  the  women  with  their  water  jars,  the  children  with 
their  bare  brown  shoulders  and  their  Spanish  prattle  —  all  these 
I  shall  remember  probably  when  I  have  forgotten  many  more  use- 
ful and  worthy  things;  and^so^for  the  present,  a  truce  to  further 
recollections. 


SOME  FURTHER  JOURNEYINGS. 


THEY  said  we  must  eat  dinner  at  twelve  sharp,  and  be  at 
the  stage  office  at  one  o'clock,  if  we  would  leave  Chihuahua  that 
Wednesday  afternoon,  but  I  had  from  two  o'clock  till  three  to 
lounge  in  the  stage  office,  a  large  and  lofty  apartment  looking 
out  on  the  white  glaring  street  on  one  side,  and  into  the  flower- 
full  and  shady  placita  on  the  other.  All  the  Mexicans  of  Chi- 
huahua were  enjoying  their  siesta  at  that  hour,  but  it  is  not  God's 
will  that  an  American  shall  sleep  in  the  daytime.  So  I  looked 
at  the  pictures  of  Lincoln  and  Washington  and  Juarez,  on  the 
wall,  and  at  a  little  card  which  announced  to  the  friends  of  the 
family  that  the  "  legitimate  child "  of  So-and-so  had  been  born 
and  baptized  on  the  dates  given.  There  were  some  Spanish 
books  on  a  shelf,  school  books  and  others,  but  they  were  nearly 
all  translations  from  the  French.  From  France  to  Spain  and 
Spain  to  Mexico  is  a  long  ways  round. 

At  last  the  six  mules  were  brought  around  and  hitched  to  the 
old  Concord  stage,  (I  expect  there  is  a  line  of  these  old  Concord 
coaches  running  over  the  Mountains  of  the  Moon,)  and  by  de- 
grees we  got  started.  When  we  got  all  our  passengers  there 
were  seven  inside — a  gentleman,  two  ladies  and  a  little  boy,  going 
back  to  Massachusetts;  my  friend  Matfield  (whom  may  Heaven 
preserve),  the  writer,  and  a  young  man  from  Durango,  a  well- 
dressed,  pleasant  fellow  of  twenty-five  or  thereabouts.  He  was 
quite  fair;  and  Matfield  said  he  belonged  to  a  family  of  Spanish 
or  Mexican  Israelites.  He  was  dressed  after  the  American  fash- 
ion, and  at  home  I  should  have  taken  him  for  a  commercial 
traveler;  but  he  was  on  his  way  to  see  his  first  locomotive  and 
take  his  first  ride  on  a  railroad  train.  He  was  the  most  mercu- 
rial and  excitable  Mexican  I  had  seen,  and  his  cries  and  exclama- 

(103) 


104  SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 

tioDs  when  the  stage  went  over  a  bad  place  excited  great 
amusement  among  his  fellow-passengers,  who,  being  Americans, 
did  not  care  whether  they  got  their  necks  broken  or  not,  so  that 
the  stage  got  through  on  time. 

At  Sacramento  we  changed  mules,  and  a  little  Mexican  girl 
brought  us  water  to  drink.  At  the  ranche  of  Sauz  we  stopped, 
after  the  moon  had  risen,  for  supper.  I  have  spoken  of  the  fort- 
like  appearance  of  these  ranches  in  a  previous  letter.  The  in- 
terior we  found  less  gloomy  than  we  expected.  The  large  room 
where  we  took  supper  was  brilliantly  lighted  with  candles, 
(kerosene  has  not  yet  begun  its  work  of  destruction  here,)  and 
the  table  was  set  by  the  lady  of  Sauz  herself.  She  was  a  widowed 
sister  of  Gov.  Terassas,  and  as  she  bustled  about  the  table,  she 
reminded  me  in  look  and  manner  of  hundreds  of  elderly  house- 
wives I  have  seen  in  Vermont.  Woodman  said  she  looked  like 
his  grandmother  in  Massachusetts.  The  supper  was  an  excellent 
one,  the  table  being  set  on  the  American  plan,  as  the  old  lady 
understood  it,  but  we  had  the  native  Mexican  coffee,  black  and 
strong. 

While  the  time  passed  I  went  into  the  kitchen  and  watched  a 
woman  make  tortillas,  a  thin  corn  cake  flattened  out  with  the 
hands  and  dried  through  on  a  griddle.  It  was  dry  and  tasteless  ; 
it  was  like  chewing  a  piece  of  the  St.  Louis  Republican. 

In  the  dim  moonlight  we  jogged  along  from  the  ranche  of 
Sauz  to  that  of  Encinillas.  In  these  lone  night-wrapped  Mexi- 
can plains,  we  talked  about  the  drama  and  music,  and  the  young 
Bostonian  sang  in  a  very  pleasant  voice,  "There  was  a  warrior 
bold,"  whereat  our  friend  from  Durango  summoned  with  one 
tremendous  effort  his  stock  of  English,  clapped  his  hands  and 
bravely  cried:  "Ver-r-r-ah  good."  Then  there  was  drowsy 
silence  until  we  reached  Encinillas,  which  is  a  little  town  com- 
posed of  the  people  who  take  care  of  the  thousands  of  cattle  on 
the  plains  about.  There  was  a  long  delay,  but  that  was  ex- 
pected, and  when  the  appointed  hour  came  we  resumed  our  journey. 
In  the  United  States  we  should  have  gone  directly  to  the  end 
of  the  track,  but  as  it  was,  we  passed  it  and  went  along  the  lake 
to  a  squalid  little  hamlet  called  Ojo-Laguna.  Here  we  remained 


SOME    FURTHER   JOURNEYINGS.  105 

until  dawn  whitened  the  east,  and  then  Ojo-Laguna,  or  the  quad- 
rupedal portion  of  it,  woke  up.  The  sweet  burro  who  sings 
tenor  woke  from  his  slumber  in  the  corral  the  veteran  who  sings 
basso  pro/undo,  and  various  sopranos  and  contraltos  joined  in  the 
strain,  which  floated  across  the  waters  of  the  lake  and  echoed  in 
the  distant  mountains ;  Mexican  curs,  fierce  and  savage,  yelped 
as  if  their  hearts  would  break ;  dismal  "  early  village  cocks  " 
tuned  their  asthmatic  pipes;  and  pigs,  reddest  and  thinnest  of 
the  porcine  tribe,  contributed  their  dulcet  squeals.  "Matins" 
at  Ojo-Laguna  will  long  be  remembered. 

Fortunately  we  moved  off  before  sunrise,  and  so  in  stillness 
saw  it  come.  We  were  in  a  valley,  or  what  seemed  to  have  been 
the  bed  of  an  ancient  lake.  The  mountains  seemed  to  shut  it 
in.  The  mountain-chain  on  the  east  cast  its  shadow  on  the 
plain  as  clearly  as  the  disk  on  the  moon  when  it  is  in  eclipse; 
beyond,  the  mountains  to  the  west  were  being  lit  up,  one  by  one, 
by  the  caudles  of  the  morning.  Peak,  and  pinnacle,  and  rocky 
wall  and  deep  gorge  and  shadowy  canon,  received  each  in  its 
turn  its  light,  now  purple,  now  rosy  red,  now  golden,  till  the 
work  was  done;  the  daily  miracle  was  finished,  and  it  was  broad 
and  open  day. 

By  nine  o'clock  we  were  flying,  at  first-class  passenger  train 
time,  for  El  Paso.  The  conductor  was  Al.  Duagan,  of  Atchison, 
the  first  passenger  conductor  on  the  Mexican  Central.  Mr.  D.  in- 
quired after  the  Atchison  people,  and  remarked  incidentally  that 
he  was  personally  cognizant  of  the  circumstances  attending  the 
decease  of  our  late  lamented  townsman,  Mr.  "Dutch  Bill.''  If 
I  correctly  remember,  this  was  Mr.  Duagan's  account  of  the 
disastrous  affair: 

"You  see  Bill,  he  turned  up  in  Gunnison,  as  a  'sure  thing' 
man.  Well,  the  marshal  and  the  police  they  was  tryin'  to  hold 
the  town  down,  and  after  awhile  they  ruther  got  the  edge  on  the 
rustlers,  and  Bill  and  his  pard  flew.  After  that,  about  four 
miles  from  town,  I  see  Bill  one  day  in  a  corral,  and  pretty  soon 
a  man  come  along  on  horseback,  and  asked  where  he  was,  and 
in  a  few  minutes  I  heard  a  shootin',  and  when  I  got  there  they'd 
got  him.  They'd  bored  a  hole  through  his  kidneys." 


106  SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 

El  Paso,  Mexico,  and  El  Paso,  Texas,  were  reached  early  in 
the  afternoon,  and  the  next  evening  travel  was  resumed  north- 
ward on  the  good  old  A.  T.  &  S.  F.  The  evening  ride  up  the 
road  was  pleasanter  than  the  morning  ride  down  had  been,  and 
I  would  beseech  my  countrymen  and  countrywomen,  journeying 
at  evening  along  the  road,  to  take  a  look  at  Las  Cruces.  Back 
of  the  town  rises,  like  the  curtain  of  a  theater,  those  cliffs  whose 
fluted  columned  sides  and  pointed  pinnacles  of  varying  heights, 
have  given  to  the  range  the  name  of  the  Organ  mountains;  at 
their  foot  jut,  like  the  edge  of  the  stage,  the  mesa;  and  then  in 
the  near  foreground  is  the  little  town  by  the  river's  brim,  Las 
Cruces.  There  are  vineyards,  acres  on  acres;  there  seemed  to 
be  great  spreading  apple  trees,  such  as  my  grandfather  planted 
in  Vermont;  there  were  great  tufted  cottonwoods,  almost  hiding 
the  roofs  of  the  town.  Across  the  railroad  ran  the  cause  of  all 
this  —  the  high-banked  acequia,  fringed  with  rushes. 

Certainly  no  man  of  sense  or  observation  can  travel  in  these 
countries  without  acknowledging  the  value  of  irrigation.  New 
Mexico  and  much  of  Old  Mexico  would  be  uninhabitable  without 
it.  I  have  seen  wonderful  growth  here  on  red  and  stony  ground 
that  a  Kansas  farmer  would  pronounce  worthless.  It  is  impossi- 
ble to  doubt  now  the  basis  of  reason  underlying  the  Garden  City 
experiment  in  Kansas,  undertaken  under  far  more  favorable  cir- 
cumstances than  can  exist  in  New  Mexico  or  Colorado,  as  far  as 
the  water  supply  and  the  quality  of  the  soil  are  concerned.  But 
while  I  throw  up  the  sponge  on  the  general  issue,  I  still  have  my 
doubts  as  to  the  results,  and  for  this  reason :  Irrigation,,  at  best, 
is  undertaken  in  connection  with  small  farming  and  gardening, 
both  of  which  are  an  abomination  in  the  eyes  of  the  average 
Western  farmer.  He  is  a  man  of  vast  ideas,  who  cannot  be 
induced  to  contemplate  small  matters.  He  wants  a  section  or 
nothing.  At  Garden  City  I  was  shown  a  piece  of  ground  half 
the  size  of  an  Atchison  town  lot,  on  which  $300  worth  of  onions 
had  been  raised.  But  your  average  farmer  I  am  speaking  of— 
from  Illinois,  Iowa  and  the  big  corn  States — had  sooner  lose  money 
on  640  acres  of  wheat  than  to  make  money  on  an  acre  of  onions. 
Gardening  of  any  sort,  no  matter  how  profitable,  is  "  running  a 


SOME   FURTHER   JOURNEYINGS.  107 

truck  patch"  with  him,  and  he  will  have  none  of  it.  Irrigation, 
too,  is  a  work  that  is  done  with  one's  hands  and  feet.  The  water 
must  be  let  into  the  little  beds  at  a  proper  time  with  a  hoe.  There 
is  no  machine,  nor  can  there  be,  to  do  that  sort  of  work,  and  the 
wide-out,  boundless  and  preeminently  extensive  Western  farmer 
will  not  get  down  to  that  variety  of  manual  labor.  If  it  were 
possible  to  invent  a  four-horse,  endless  apron,  side-draft  irrigator, 
adorned  with  red  paint  and  a  chattel  mortgage,  which  would  irri- 
gate forty  acres  a  day,  then  I  might  have  hope  that  the  idea  of 
irrigation  would  be  seized  upon  by  our  agricultural  fellow-citizens 
of  Kansas.  At  present  I  have  no  such  confidence.  The  patient 
and  industrious  Germans,  who  form  a  large  majority  of  the  market 
gardeners  around  every  American  city,  may  take  hold  of  irrigation 
and  make  a  success  of  it.  I  would  advise  even  them  to  employ 
Mexicans,  who  can  be  secured  in  Colorado.  There  is  no  use  in  try- 
ing to  tell  what  might  be  made  of  the  banks  of  the  Arkansas  were 
they  cultivated  as  are  the  banks  of  the  Rio  Grande.  A  Las 
Cruces  every  few  miles,  where  there  are  now  bare,  sunburnt  ham- 
lets that  stick  up  like  a  sore  thumb,  would  be  a  refreshing  sight 
indeed.  The  upper  Arkansas  Valley  might  be  the  garden,  the 
orchard,  of  Colorado,  and  even  Old  Mexico,  now  about  to  pour 
out  such  riches  as  Cortez  never  dreamed  of. 

But  we  have  stopped  a  long  time  at  Las  Cruces,  and  must 
get  on. 

As  stated  in  a  former  letter,  I  have  had  a  desire  to  see  before 
leaving  this  country  a  sure-enough  mine.  "  Blossom  Rock,"  and 
"indications,"  and  " prospect  holes,"  did  not  satisfy  me.  What 
was  wanted  was  a  sight  of  silver  ore,  of  silver  itself  coming  out 
of  the  ground  in  quantities  at  the  present  time. 

After  considerable  inquiry  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
best  place  to  visit  was  the  Lake  Valley  mines,  located  at  the 
little  town  of  Daly,  Dona  Ana  county,  New  Mexico.  I  had 
also  a  melancholy  interest  in  the  locality  from  the  fact  that  my 
poor  friend,  Lieutenant  George  Smith,  of  the  Ninth  Cavalry, 
was  killed  by  the  Indians  not  far  from  the  place. 

I  left  the  north-bound  train  at  Rincon,  stayed  there  till  morn- 
ing, and  then  took  the  down-train  for  Nutt  station,  twenty-one 


108  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

miles  from  Rincon,  and  twelve  from  the  mines.  A  stage 
took  me  over  the  open  prairie  rising  to  the  foot-hills  of  the  Black 
Range,  in  the  very  edge  of  which  the  mines  are  located.  We 
climbed  no  rocks,  passed  through  no  canons.  It  was  easier  than 
driving  from  Atchison  to  Nortonville.  There  is  a  little  triangu- 
lar opening  in  the  smooth  hills,  which  are  dotted  with  soap- 
weed,  and  here  is  the  new  stamp  mill  and  the  office  of  the  super- 
intendent, and  the  hotel  and  the  several  shops  and  stores  that 
make  up  the  little  town  of  Daly;  and  on  the  lower  edge  of  one 
of  the  hills,  three  hundred  yards  from  the  stamp  mill,  were  the 
mines.  Had  I  not  known  to  the  contrary,  I  should  have  sup- 
posed that  they  were  getting  out  the  dark  sandstone,  such  as  you 
find  along  the  Solomon  valley  at  Minneapolis;  or  perhaps  I 
might  have  taken  it  for  iron  ore.  It  was  in  reality  silver  ore. 
They  were  digging  and  blasting  it  out,  just  as  they  do  the  Sixth- 
street  bluff  at  Atchison,  with  the  difference  that  when  a  blast 
went  off  it  lifted  from  $3,000  to  $6,000  into  the  air.  I  had  no 
letters  of  introduction,  and  the  bare  statement  of  my  occupation 
in  life  relieved  any  suspicion  that  I  wished  to  purchase  a  mine 
or  mines.  In  the  absence  of  Mr.  D.  H.  Jackson,  the  superin- 
tendent, Mr.  Gibson,  the  book-keeper,  went  about  with  me.  The 
lower  edge  of  the  hillside  was  cut  up  with  trenches  and  holes. 
Along  the  trenches  was  piled  up  the  ore.  The  ore  could  not 
have  been  put  back  into  the  trenches  again.  Limestone  bulk- 
heads had  been  built  up,  and  on  these  was  ore  regularly  corded  up 
as  if  for  measurement.  The  finest  ore  had  been  sorted  over  and 
put  in  sacks.  I  was  told  that  a  chunk  of  this  XXX,  which  I 
would  carelessly  have  thrown  at  a  dog,  was  worth  from  $3  to  $5. 
There  it  was,  dug  from  the  surface  to  a  depth  of  six  or  eight 
feet,  cords  on  cords  of  it,  running  from  hundreds  to  thousands  of 
dollars  to  the  ton.  It  was  dug  as  easily  and  cheaply  as  so  much 
limestone,  cheaper  than  coal,  and  yet  it  was  silver. 

Mr.  Gibson  went  back  to  his  books,  and  I  went  down  to  the 
stamp  mill  and  talked  to  Mr.  Town,  the  builder.  He  looked 
like  Colonel  Towne,  of  the  Fort  Scott  &  Gulf,  and  may  have 
been  a  relative  of  that  wonderful  mechanical  family.  The  mill, 
to  be  in  operation  about  June  15,  cost  $100,000.  Every  stick  in 


SOME    FURTHER    JOURNEYINGS. 

it  came  from  Puget's  Sound,  1,600  miles  by  water  and  1,300  miles 
by  rail.  One  piece  of  timber  contained  1,100  feet  of  lumber. 
The  mill  was  a  twenty- stamp,  running  two  sets  of  stamps,  etc., 
so  as  to  work  two  different  lots  of  ore  at  the  same  time.  Mr. 
Town  explained  the  amalgamation  process  as  I  had  heard  it  at 
Socorro,  but  giving  many  details,  however,  which  would  not  in- 
terest the  reader.  I  was,  however,  more  interested  in  Mr.  Town 
than  anything  else.  He  had  been  working  about  mines  for  thirty 
years,  and  his  hands  were  bitten  to  pieces  by  quicksilver.  I  never 
realized  before  what  a  colossal  business  this  gold  and  silver  min- 
ing is.  He  chalked  out  on  the  floor  the  great  porphyry  ledge  on 
which  the  Comstock  is  located.  He  told  me  how  many  millions 
had  been  taken  out  of  this  mine,  and  here,  right  alongside,  mil- 
lions of  dollars  had  been  sunk  in  the  rock,  and  not  an  ounce  of 
ore  had  been  found.  He  told  me  of  the  enormous  cost  of  it.  At 
one  mine  a  cylinder  weighing  twenty-six  tons  had  been  dragged  up 
over  a  railroad  constructed  for  the  purpose.  Building  the  pyra- 
mids was  a  child's  play  compared  with  it.  He  told  me  that  this 
twenty-stamp  mill  at  Daly,  though  so  large,  was  but  an  aver- 
age; that  there  was  a  mill  in  the  Black  Hills  that  ran  one  hun- 
dred stamps.  Then  he  told  me  of  men  working  3,600  feet 
under  ground ;  of  places  so  hot  that  a  man  ran  through  them  as 
through  a  prairie  fire ;  where  a  drop  of  water  falling  on  the  skin 
blistered  it.  Ah,  this  silver  quarter  that  we  toss  to  the  butcher 
or  to  the  baker:  how  much  thought  and  energy  and  skill  and 
labor  and  suffering  it  takes  to  wring  it  from  the  earth ! 

After  dinner,  Mr.  Jackson  having  returned,  we  visited  the  un- 
derground works.  By  this  time  quite  a  party  had  collected.  In 
one  new-comer  I  recognized  a  transient  Topeka  acquaintance  of 
years  ago.  He  had  been  living  for  years  in  Georgetown,  and 
knew  all  about  mines.  We  went  down  into  the  "  Bridal  Cham- 
ber." It  is  perhaps  fifty  feet  from  the  surface,  and  shut  off  from 
the  shaft  by  a  door.  Eight  or  ten  men  can  stand  in  the  excava- 
tion. A  candle  held  to  the  walls  reveals  millions  of  shining  par- 
ticles. It  looks  like  a  mass  of  earth,  half-decayed  sandstone,  and 
here  and  there  masses  of  ore  that  can  be  cut  with  a  knife.  This 
last  is  horn  silver.  From  this  place  specimens  have  been  assayed 


110  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

running  $29,000  to  the  ton.  All  around  is  ore  that  will  run 
$10,000  to  the  ton.  A  ton  can  be  broken  down  with  four  or  five 
blows  with  a  pick.  A  man  could  scrape  up  a  fortune  with  his 
bare  hands. 

We  went  through  galleries,  and  looked  at  piles  of  ore  until  we 
were  tired.  Then  we  went  to  the  office  and  looked  at  a  little  brick 
weighing  eight  and  a  half  ounces,  taken  from  two  pounds  of  ore. 

This  is  all.  I  am  no  mining  expert,  and  have  no  interest  in 
the  ups  and  downs  of  mines,  but  I  will  venture  the  statement 
that  last  Saturday  I  saw  the  richest  silver  mine  in  the  United 
States.  There  are  four  mining  companies  with  claims  at  Daly  — 
the  Sierra  Grande,  the  Sierra  Bella,  the  Sierra  Rica,  and  the  Sierra 
Apache. 


MEXICO  AND  RAILROADS. 


As  a  man  may  live  in  ignorance  of  the  real  nature  and  charac- 
ter of  his  own  wife  and  children,  so  we  of  the  United  States  have 
long  been  in  darkness  concerning  everything  pertaining  to  Mex- 
ico and  the  Mexicans.  It  is  quite  certain  that  more  books  about 
Mexico  have  been  published  in  France  than  in  the  United  States, 
and  in  a  commercial  point  of  view  the  influence  of  France  and 
England  has  been  vastly  greater  than  that  of  our  country.  In 
the  markets  of  Chihuahua  to-day  French  and  English  goods  are 
sold  under  our  very  noses — goods  which  we  claim  to  manufac- 
ture cheaper  and  better  than  anybody  else.  I  saw  at  El  Paso  del 
Norte,  not  only  foreign  rails  being  laid  down,  but  cross-pieces  and 
insulators  for  telegraph  poles  imported  from  England. 

To  the  average  ill-informed  American,  a  Mexican  is  a  "Greaser," 
a  low-bred,  infamous  creature,  without  manners  or  morals;  lazy, 
cowardly,  treacherous  and  ignorant.  The  men  have  been  uni- 
formly represented  as  without  honor,  and  the  women  without 
virtue.  Mexico  has  been  represented  as  an  utterly  priest-ridden 
country,  and  not  in  any  sense  a  Christian  country.  Bishop  Haven 
was  fond  of  saying  that  the  human  sacrifices  of  the  Aztecs  gave 
way  to  the  "  religion  of  Cortez,"  and  that  the  Christian  religion 
was  unknown  in  Mexico  until  it  was  introduced  by  some  soldiers 
of  the  American  army  under  Gen.  Scott. 

I  suppose  it  is  possible  for  an  American  to  live  twenty-five 
years  in  Mexico  and  retain  all  these  prejudices.  Judge  King- 
man,  in  his  lecture  "Across  the  Continent  on  a  Buckboard," 
spoke  of  the  style  of  American  who  lives  in  New  Mexico  for 
twenty-five  or  thirty  years,  absorbs  all  the  native  vices  in  addi- 
tion to  those  he  imported  with  him,  but  to  the  last  declares  that 

(111) 


112  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

he  is  an  American,  and  trusts  that  God  may  burn  him  in  perdi- 
tion if  he  is  not  also  a  Protestant. 

For  myself,  I  am  not  conscious  of  entertaining  many  prejudices 
at  the  most,  and  of  those,  few  which  will  not  yield  to  reason  and 
evidence;  and,  beside,  to  me  the  most  offensive  feature  of  our 
national  character — and  we  get  it  from  the  English  —  is  the 
habit  of  considering  every  people  who  do  not  conform  to  our 
standard  in  dress,  manners,  government  and  religion  as  heathen 
and  the  scum  of  the  earth. 

Divesting  himself  of  such  feelings,  if  he  entertain  them,  and 
the  American  finds  that  Mexico  is  a  great  country,  with  numer- 
ous natural  resources,  inhabited  by  a  people  very  different,  it  is 
true,  from  the  people  of  the  United  States,  yet  a  people  proud  of 
and  attached  to  their  country;  proud  of  its  independence,  and 
teaching  their  children  the  history  of  the  struggle  by  which  that 
independence  was  achieved.  He  will  find  a  people  governed  by 
a  certain  social  code,  and  extremely  tenacious  in  regard  to  its 
observance;  as  much  so  as  the  French  or  any  European  people. 
He  will  find  a  people  who,  while  adhering  to  their  ancient  relig- 
ion, have  yet  deprived  the  church  of  its  power  as  a  political 
organization ;  who  have  remanded  the  priest  to  the  altar,  where 
he  belongs,  and,  more  than  any  other  Spanish-American  country, 
have  effected  the  secularization  of  education.  This  last  step, 
the  absolute  elimination  of  the  church  as  a  political  factor,  has 
brought  about  what  Mexico  has  long  needed  —  the  destruction 
of  the  idea  of  imperialism,  revived  once  and  again  by  Iturbide 
and  by  Maximilian.  I  do  not  say  that  any  form  of  religion  is 
incompatible  with  republicanism,  but  I  do  say  that  universal 
secular  education  is  necessary  to  its  existence.  This  point  Mex- 
ico is  steadily  approaching.  There  are  ten  public  schools  in 
Chihuahua,  and  in  the  city  council  room  of  Chihuahua  may  be 
seen  a  piece  of  embroidery,  a  testimonial  from  the  children  of 
the  city  schools  to  the  city  government.  The  Governor  of  the 
State  of  Guanajuato  has  recently  submitted  a  bill  to  the  Legis- 
lature providing  for  compulsory  education.  A  knowledge  of 
reading  and  writing  is  much  more  commonly  diffused  among  the 
common  people  of  Mexico  than  is  generally  supposed  by  foreign- 


MEXICO   AND    RAILROADS.  113 

ers,  and  I  have  noticed  that  Mexicans  usually  write  a  hand 
remarkable  for  beauty  and  legibility. 

With  the  settlement  of  the  imperial  and  clerical  questions  has 
come  a  settled  government  and  the  reign  of  law  under  the  rule 
of  General  Porfirio  Diaz  and  his  successor,  General  Gonzalez. 
Courts  exist  everywhere  in  Mexico,  the  system  being  somewhat 
like  our  own,  save  that  in  the  courts  above  that  of  the  justice  of 
the  peace  the  proceedings  are  all  in  writing.  I  have  seen  the 
reports  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  Republic  advertised  for 
sale,  as  the  reports  of  the  State  Supreme  Courts  are  sold  in  the 
United  States. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  idea  that  Mexico  is  a  country 
without  laws,  without  order,  and  with  an  utterly  barbarous,  ig- 
norant and  vicious  population,  is  erroneous. 

The  progress  of  the  country  has  been  made  clearer  to  my  mind 
by  looking  over  the  volumes  containing  the  text  of  the  conces- 
sions under  which  the  construction  of  the  Mexican  Central  Rail- 
road has  been  undertaken.  The  volume  makes,  in  Spanish  and 
English,  two  hundred  pages.  An  intelligent  American  gentle- 
man of  Chihuahua  said  to  me  that  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States  could  learn  a  great  deal  from  the  careful  course  pursued 
by  the  Mexican  government  in  its  dealings  with  corporations. 
In  the  pages  before  me,  the  government  pledges  itself  to  aid  the 
construction  of  a  great  railway  system,  extending  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  Republic ;  more  strictly  speaking,  from  the  city  of 
Mexico  to  El  Paso  del  Norte,  a  distance  of  1,300  miles,  with 
transverse  lines  running  from  Tampico  to  San  Bias,  and  connect- 
ing the  Gulf  and  the  Pacific.  It  pledges  to  this  great  enterprise 
a  subsidy  of  $14,500  a  mile,  exempts  the  road  from  taxation 
for  fifteen  years,  admits  all  material  for  its  construction  free  of 
duty,  and  provides  that  six  per  cent,  of  the  customs  revenue 
of  the  country  shall  be  devoted  to  the  payment  of  the  subsidy. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  interest  of  the  people  is  carefully  looked 
after;  the  passenger  and  freight  tariff  is  fixed;  the  former  in  no 
case  to  exceed  five  cents  a  mile  for  first-class  passage,  with  second 
and  third-rate  fares  to  correspond.  Every  detail  in  regard  to 
damages  to  private  and  public  property  is  looked  after.  The 


114  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

method  of  construction  must  be  such  as  the  government  approves  • 
and  in  the  event  that  the  railroad  company  does  not  comply  in 
every  respect  with  the  letter  and  spirit  of  the  contract,  then  the 
road  is  declared  forfeited,  and  the  road  may  be  taken  by  the 
government  and  the  contract  re-let  to  the  same  or  other  parties, 
since  the  Mexican  government  does  not  propose  to  become  in  any 
event  a  builder  of  railroads.  It  seems  to  me  that  in  these  con- 
cessions there  is  displayed  genuine  and  far-seeing  statesmanship; 
and  yet  the  statesmen  who  drew  up  the  conditions  were  Mexicans 
born  and  bred. 

It  seems  a  little  singular  that  after  capitalists  and  adventurers 
of  every  nation,  French,  Spanish  and  English,  have  had  the  first 
chance  in  Mexico  for  years,  that  this  concession  should  at  last  be 
obtained  by  a  company  of  New-Englanders,  headed  officially  by 
an  ex-Cape  Cod  sea  captain.  Such  is  the  case,  however.  The 
men  into  whose  hands  the  railroad  system  of  Mexico  has  been 
committed  are  those  whose  names  are  familiar  in  Kansas,  from 
the  fact  that  they  are  painted  on  the  locomotives  of  the  Atchison, 
Topeka  &  Santa  Fe  Kailroad. 

The  value  of  the  concession  (which  includes  several  former 
minor  grants)  is  incalculable.  There  can  never  be  another  great 
railroad  in  Mexico.  By  the  terms  of  the  concession  no  compet- 
ing line  can  be  built  within  twenty  leagues.  The  line  runs  along 
the  high  table-land,  the  backbone,  as  it  were,  of  Mexico,  and 
there  is  no  room  for  any  other.  By  the  terras  of  the  concession 
the  road  must  reach,  directly  or  by  branch,  the  capital  of  every 
State  between  El  Paso  and  the  city  of  Mexico.  It  thus  reaches 
every  important  point.  Chihuahua  is  one  of  the  smallest  in 
point  of  population  of  the  Mexican  State  capitals.  Zacatecas 
was  described  to  me  as  "  eight  times  as  large  as  Chihuahua  and 
a  hundred  times  as  rich,"  and  there  are  larger  and  richer  cities 
than  Zacatecas. 

The  road  runs  through  two  zones,  or  from  the  temperate  to 
the  confines  of  the  torrid  zone.  It  runs  through  cotton,  cocoa, 
coffee  and  sugar  fields,  and  through  a  country  full  of  mines  which 
have  yielded  their  unexhausted  treasures  for  three  centuries.  It 
is  the  most  romantic  enterprise  that  a  lot  of  practical  Yankees 


MEXICO   AND    RAILROADS.  115 

ever  took  hold  of.  I  believe  it  is  the  great  railroad  boom  of  the 
immediate  future,  and  I  expect  a  Kansas  exodus  will  follow  it& 
construction.  I  expect  that  within  two  years  the  mails  will  be 
burdened  with  letters  addressed  to  "formerly  of  Kansas"  men, 
residing  in  Chihuahua,  Durango,  Zacatecas,  Aguas  Caliente, 
Guadalajara,  and  other  Mexican  cities. 

Some  very  well  posted  people  have  asserted  that  the  road  will 
never  do  a  passenger  business.  Such  persons  do  not  understand  the 
Mexican  temperament.  The  Mexican  is  a  social  being;  he  likes 
to  go  about  and  visit  his  friends.  He  is  fond  of  traveling.  In 
the  New-Mexican  towns  where  street  railways  have  been  built, 
he  is  their  constant  patron.  When  the  new  world  of  the  North 
is  open  to  him,  he  will  not  fail  to  go  and  see  it.  The  wealthy 
Mexican  travels  as  a  luxury.  Many  of  the  higher  classes  of 
Mexicans  visit  Europe,  and  many  Mexican  gentlemen  have  been 
educated  abroad.  This  class  of  travelers  will  constantly  enlarge. 

The  influence  of  the  railroad  is  seen  the  moment  one  crosses 
the  line  and  enters  El  Paso  del  Norte.  Here  a  Kansas  man, 
ex-Governor  Anthony,  with  several  Kansas  associates,  has  been 
at  work,  and  has  built  the  first  railroad  town  in  Mexico. 
There  is  a  yard  of  fifty-seven  acres,  numerous  tracks  and  turn- 
tables, shops,  store-houses,  freight-houses,  and  now  a  new  depot. 
The  American  has  sensibly  adopted  in  this  building  the  Mexi- 
can adobe,  but  he  makes  the  adobes  with  machinery  of  his  own, 
turning  them  out  ten  times  as  fast  as  under  the  Mexican  plan.  El 
Paso  is  now  to  the  Mexican  Central  what  Topeka  is  to  the  A,  T. 
&  S.  F.  Hundreds  of  Mexican  laborers  are  employed.  They 
get  wages  such  as  they  never  dreamed  of  before,  fill  up  with 
American  "grub"  at  the  railroad  boarding-house,  and  are  trans- 
formed internally  and  externally.  These  men  will  never  again 
follow  the  banner  of  any  revolutionary  chief.  They  will  take 
no  heed  of  prouunciamentos  if  they  are  issued.  They  will  at- 
tend to  their  regular  business.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  know  that  in 
this  great  enterprise  a  fellow-citizen  of  ours  has  borne  a  promi- 
nent part.  Ex-Governor  Anthony  was  early  on  the  ground,  ha& 
encountered  and  overcome  a  mountain  of  prejudice  on  the  part 
of  the  local  Mexican  authorities;  has  worked  day  and  night, 
attending  to  every  detail,  and  will  soon  have  the  satisfaction  of 


116  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

riding  into  Chihuahua  over  a  first-class  road,  over  which  trains 
have  been  already  run  at  the  rate  of  forty  miles  an  hour. 

I  think  one  secret  of  Governor  Anthony's  success  betrays  itself 
in  the  kindly  and  interested  tone  in  which  he  spoke  of  the  Mexi- 
can people.  He  had  much  to  say  of  their  law-abiding  and 
peaceful  character.  In  fact,  he  has  a  theory  that  the  troubles  of 
Mexico  have  resulted,  not  from  a  lawless  disposition  on  the  part 
of  the  common  people,  but  from  their  devotion  to  those  whom 
they  have  been  accustomed  to  regard  as  their  lawful  and  legiti- 
mate leaders.  Naturally  adverse  to  fighting,  they  will  yet  follow 
those  to  whom  they  have  been  accustomed  to  look  for  orders  to 
the  last  gasp.  With  the  spread  of  education  this  distinction  of 
leaders  and  led  will  cease  in  Mexico,  at  least  in  its  present  form. 

By  the  terms  of  the  law,  the  Mexican  Central  is  a  Mexican 
enterprise.  All  its  officers  and  employes  are,  in  law,  Mexicans. 
They  have  no  recourse  to  any  foreign  power  or  potentate.  In 
accepting  the  subsidy  and  other  aid  they  consent  to  conduct  their 
enterprise  under  the  laws  of  Mexico,  and  no  other.  This  seems 
to  me  just,  and  it  will  be  an  interesting  study  to  watch  Mexico 
work  out  her  own  salvation  through  the  railroad. 

As  I  have  said,  I  look  upon  Mexico  as  the  great  opening  field 
of  enterprise,  and  I  expect  that  many  Kansans  will  try  their 
fortunes  therein.  To  such  I  would  say,  that  they  will  do  well  to 
drop  on  the  frontier  the  most  of  their  preconceived  notions  about 
Mexico  and  the  Mexicans;  to  be  prepared  to  respect  the  preju- 
dices and  feelings  of  the  people ;  and  to  avoid,  not  only  rowdyism 
as  a  matter  of  course,  but  that  lofty  superciliousness  and  loud 
and  intolerable  bumptiousness  which  makes  so  many  traveling 
Englishmen  and  Americans  utterly  detested  in  foreign  parts. 
People  who  cannot  like  anybody  but  themselves,  or  any  country 
except  their  own,  had  better  stay  at  home.  To  an  American  of 
a  kindly,  tolerant  and  forbearing  spirit,  willing  to  put  up  with 
unavoidable  inconveniences  —  in  short,  to  an  American  gentle- 
man, Mexico  will  prove  a  most  interesting  country,  and  should 
certainly  be  visited,  especially  now  that  the  country  is  soon  to  be 
opened  up  in  its  length  and  breadth  by  a  great  railroad,  the  re- 
sult of  American  enterprise,  and,  it  is  but  just  to  add,  of  Mexi- 
can liberality  and  public  spirit. 


OUT  ON  THE  ATLANTIC  &  PACIFIC. 


AT  Albuquerque  I  struck  a  new  railroad,  the  Atlantic  &  Pacific. 
There  is  more  of  it  back  east,  but  the  connection  is  lost  somewhere 
in  the  Indian  Territory,  and  is  taken  up  again  at  Albuquerque. 
It  starts  at  that  town  and  pushes  out  into  the  Western  wilds  —  a 
veritable  Christopher  Columbus  of  a  railroad. 

At  Albuquerque  the  road  has  built  fine  shops  and  offices,  and 
has  about  three  hundred  people  employed.  It  has  done  much  to 
operate  the  Albuquerque  boom,  which  I  regard  as  about  the  most 
genuine  in  New  Mexico. 

Other  railroads  are  built  to  reach  certain  way  points,  as  well 
as  to  connect  certain  terminals;  but  the  Atlantic  &  Pacific  starts 
out  to  the  mountains,  canons,  deserts,  sage-brush,  Indians  and 
"rustlers"  with  an  eye  single  to  going  to  California.  There  was 
not  a  "laid-out"  town  on  its  route  when  it  was  projected,  nor  do 
I  believe  that  there  ever  would  have  been  a  town  had  the  road 
not  been  built.  As  it  is,  the  road  has  started  out  carrying  its 
own  wood,  water  and  provisions,  and-  has  reached  the  Canon 
Diablo,  which  means  the  Devil's  Own  Canon,  a  matter  of  three 
hundred  miles  from  Albuquerque. 

The  reason  this  otherwise  unaccountable  railroad  has  been  built, 
is  because  its  engineers  have  found  a  place  where  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains have  simply  played  out;  there  is  a  gap  in  the  great  mountain 
fence,  and  through  this  opening  the  road  has  been  run.  There 
is,  properly  speaking,  no  pass,  no  defile,  no  canon  —  only  a  place 
where  there  seems  to  be  no  mountain.  The  track,  with  at  the  most 
u  grade  of  58  feet  to  the  mile,  climbs  the  Continental  Divide,  and 
then  goes  down  at  the  same  rate,  and  the  road  to  the  Pacific  is 
open.  This  is  the  reason  the  Atlantic  &  Pacific  has  been  built. 

The  discovery  of  this  route  is  associated  with  the  name  of 
8  (117) 


118  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

Wingate.  There  is  an  old  abandoned  Fort  Wingate  near  the 
line,  and  also  a  new  Fort  Wingate;  but  who  Wingate  was,  no. 
body  along  the  road  appeared  to  know. 

The  west-bound  passenger  on  the  Atlantic  &  Pacific  leaves 
Albuquerque  at  half-past  nine  o'clock  at  night,  connecting  with 
the  Santa  Fe  train  from  the  north.  The  night  of  my  departure 
the  cars  were  crowded,  and  every  man  had  a  roll  of  blankets 
and  a  gun. 

Morning,  or  rather,  breakfast,  found  us  at  Coolidge,  until 
lately  known  to  all  the  country  round  as  "Crane's  ranche,"  (of 
which  "more  anon,")  and  then  came  Fort  Wingate — the  new 
one — the  fort  itself  being  situated  at  the  foot  of  a  line  of  pine- 
covered  hills,  in  sight  of,  but  some  three  miles  from  the  track. 
Fort  Wingate  passed,  the  stations  consisted  of  the  station  house 
and  the  name. 

By  the  dawn's  early  light  you  begin  to  notice  Indians.  The 
Atlantic  &  Pacific  is  the  great  and  only  Indian  route.  It  is  the 
only  railroad  by  which  you  can  reach  Mr.  Cushing's[Zunis,  like- 
wise the  Accomas,  also  the  Navajos,  also  the  Apaches.  It 
makes  a  connection  with  the  Moquis,  and  will  soon  give  transit 
facilities  to  the  clothesless  Mojaves.  If  you  want  to  see  "In- 
juns," take  the  Atlantic  &  Pacific.  The  Zunis  just  now  are  at- 
tracting tourists  and  investigators  on  account  of  their  advertising 
trip  under  the  management  of  Mr.  Gushing,  who  has  found  out 
more  about  them  than  they  ever  suspected  themselves.  Major 
Dane,  who  rejoined  me  at  Albuquerque,  paid  them  a  visit.  They 
seem  to  be  much  like  other  Pueblo  Indians;  they  weave  woolen 
goods  like  the  Navajoes,  raise  peaches,  grind  corn  with  a  couple 
of  rocks,  and  eat  mutton  with  the  wool  on.  These  seem  to  be 
the  principal  features  of  Zuni  life.  They  are  much  attached  to 
Mr.  Gushing,  whom  they  have  elected  register  of  deeds,  county 
commissioner,  or  something  of  the  kind.  They  were  awaiting 
his  return  to  assist  in  tying  up  bunches  of  feathers  and  getting 
ready  for  some  grand  and  intensely-interesting  ceremonies.  The 
Accomas  seem  to  have  more  practical  sense  than  the  Zunis. 
Major  Dane  and  a  traveling  companion  having  incautiously  used 
the  word  "Washington"  in  the  Accoma  country,  were^promptly 


OUT   ON   THE   ATLANTIC   &   PACIFIC.  119 

put  in  arrest  until  the  Indians  could  ascertain  whether  any  new 
swindle  was  contemplated.  The  Major  having  convinced  the 
Accomas  that  he  did  not  live  in  Washington,  and  had  no  con- 
nection with  the  Interior  Department,  he  was  allowed  to  depart 
in  safety. 

The  Indians  seen  along  the  Alantic  &  Pacific  are  mostly  Nav- 
ajos.  They  may  be  seen  lounging  around  the  stations,  or  work- 
ing along  the  railroad  grade.  Their  droves  of  piebald  horses 
and  flocks  of  sheep  and  goats  are  seen  at  frequent  intervals.  The 
Indians  herd  their  sheep  and  goats  together,  on  account  of  the 
superior  courage  of  the  goats.  When  the  sheep  get  frightened, 
and  ready  to  run,  and  are  in  the  state  of  mind  peculiar  to  a 
Kansas  legislator  when  he  pipes  out,  "  Mr.  Speaker,  I  desire  to 
change  my  vote/'  the  goats  stand  still  with  their  heads  up  and 
investigate  the  approaching  object,  and  so  encourage  the  sheep  to 
follow  their  example.  Thus  is  courage  infectious  even  among 
brutes. 

The-Navajos  appear  friendly  to  the  railroad,  and  as  yet  have 
not  organized  an  anti-monopoly  party.  In  compliment  to  the 
tribe  the  railroad  have  named  a  station  Manuelito,  after  the  head 
chief  of  the  Navajos.  As  the  Navajos  own  a  million  sheep,  their 
wool  export  is  a  matter  of  importance. 

The  landscape  from  Coolidge  to  Defiance  presents  little  change. 
On  one  side  runs  a  line  of  forest-covered  hills  or  mountains.  On 
the  other  side  stretches  an  almost  unbroken  perpendicular  wall 
of  red  sandstone,  crowned  with  trees;  at  Coolidge  this  wall  is 
four  or  five  miles  from  the  track,  at  other  points  it  is  within  a 
few  rods.  It  is  worn  by  the  wind  and  the  rain  into  fantastic 
shapes.  At  some  points  the  wall  is  pierced  by  numerous  holes 
as  if  worn  by  the  action  of  gravel  and  water,  like  the  "pot- 
holes" seen  in  the  rocky  beds  of  rivers.  Between  the  sandstone 
bluffs  and  the  wooded  hills  is  a  valley,  or  plateau,  varying  in 
width ;  and  in  many  places  white  with  a  flower  that  lies  on  the 
surface  like  snow-flakes.  It  fades  quickly,  and  is  called  the 
"  phantom  flower."  The  valley  everywhere  looks  barren,  bu- 
the  flocks  and  herds  seemed  in  good  condition.  There  are  nut 
merous  springs  in  the  foot-hills,  and  a  particularly  fine  one  at 
Fort  Wingate. 


120  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

At  the  line  of  New  Mexico  and  Arizona,  which  is  marked  by 
a  post,  the  abomination  of  desolation  commences.  The  red  sand- 
stone changes  to  gray,  and  finally  recedes  on  either  hand  into  the 
blue  distance,  leaving  a  wide  plain,  broken  here  and  there  by 
piles  of  rock,  which  look  like  great  masses  of  slag  from  a  fur- 
nace. The  surface,  patched  here  and  there  with  sage-brush,  looks 
like  an  old  dried  buffalo  hide.  A  dry  river,  the  Rio  Puerco,  winds 
through  the  sandy  solitude.  In  the  rainy  season  this  sandy, 
gravelly  bed  is  suddenly  filled  with  a  rushing,  roaring  torrent, 
which  tears  everything  to  pieces.  The  railroad  people  were 
erecting  barriers  of  plank  and  stone,  and  building  levees  and 
changing  the  bed  of  the  stream,  to  avoid  the  possible  and  prob- 
able washouts.  For  miles  not  a  tree  was  to  be  seen.  It  seemed 
like  the  bed  of  a  dried  sea,  and  here  and  there  a  long,  }ow  ledge 
of  rocks  looked  like  the  hulk  of  some  great  ship,  left  stranded 
by  the  subsiding  waters.  The  wind  moaned  and  shrieked  over 
the  wilderness,  catching  up  the  sand  in  high,  whirling  columns, 
which  sped  across  the  line  of  vision,  and  then  dissolved,  sand  to 
sand.  Rocks,  dead  rivers,  sand  cyclones,  and  the  fierce,  unpity- 
ing  sun  —  this  was  the  scene.  A  running  stream  was  reached  at 
last,  the  Little  Colorado.  There,  in  an  immensely  wide,  gravelly 
bed,  runs  a  narrow  flow  of  water.  At  Holbrook  some  cotton- 
woods  were  growing.  At  St.  Joseph  the  Mormons  have  a  set- 
tlement, and  their  little  colonies  are  scattered  along  the  Little 
Colorado.  A  well-dressed  and  intelligent  young  man  rode  some 
distance  on  the  train,  whom  I  understood  afterward  was  a  Mor- 
mon storekeeper  or  commissary.  Although  the  condition  of  the 
Mormons  in  Arizona  had  been  discussed  in  his  presence,  he  had 
not  mentioned  or  suggested  his  connection  with  the  multi-marry- 
ing people.  I  imagine  polygamy  does  not  flourish  greatly  among 
the  sage  brush  of  the  Little  Colorado  and  Rio  Puerco  country. 
A  harem  in  Turkey  may  be  a  romantic  idea;  but  there  is  nothing 
particularly  gorgeous  in  the  Mormon  reality  —  four  or  five  hag- 
gard, angular,  sun-bonneted,  sandy-colored  old  girls,  browsing 
around  among  the  greasewood  and  cactus,  and  "dobes"  and 
brush  corrals  of  a  desert.  The  spectacle  of  an  old  Mormon 
striking  out  on  his  burro  through  the  sand  by  the  wan  moon 


OUT   ON   THE    ATLANTIC    &   PACIFIC.  121 

light  to  the  music  of  the  coyotes'  midnight  choir  to  woo  and  win 
his  fifteenth  bride,  will  never  inspire  another  Moore  to  write  an- 
other Lalla  Rookh. 

Winslow,  Arizona,  was  reached  for  supper,  and  a  nicely-served 
meal  it  was.  The  town  stands  in  a  dead  flat  plain.  In  the  dis- 
tance are  scattered  peaks,  remains  of  some  former  mountain 
chain.  Even  the  purple  twilight  did  not  redeem  their  weird  bar- 
renness. They  seemed  to  mark  the  confines  of  a  lone  land,  tra- 
versed by  no  human  foot,  where  only  devils  roam  and  satyrs  cry. 
But  turning  from  these  scorched  and  splintered  ruins  of  a  lost 
world,  there  ran  directly  in  front,  outlined  against  the  saffron 
sky,  the  most  kindly,  human,  symmetrical  mountain  I  have  seen 
in  all  my  wanderings  in  these  southern  regions.  It  is  the  Fran- 
cisco or  San  Francisco  mountain,  forty  miles  beyond  the  Canon 
Diablo,  and  directly  in  the  path  of  the  oncoming  railroad.  Its 
sides  were  dark  with  forest,  its  top  was  streaked  with  snow.  It 
rose  in  gentle  slopes  to  a  long,  wavy  crest,  and  one  could  imagine 
the  voice  of  waterfalls  and  the  curling  smoke  from  the  homes  of 
men  about  its  feet.  I  saw  it  at  sunset,  by  moonlight,  and  again 
at  sunrise,  and  it  was  ever  the  same  gentle  and  yet  majestic  pres- 
ence. From  its  summit,  it  is  said,  you  can  make  out  the  windings 
of  the  Grand  Canon  of  the  Colorado. 

Canon  Diablo,  the  present  end  of  the  Atlantic  &  Pacific  track, 
was  the  last  station  reached.  The  canon  is  half  a  mile  beyond 
the  little  town  of  tents,  houses,  shanties  and  box  cars,  and  I  saw 
it  by  moonlight.  The  word  canon  usually  brings  up  the  idea  of 
a  rift  through  a  high  mountain  or  a  narrow  passage  between  two 
mountains,  but  there  is  no  mountain  here  —  it  is  just  a  tremen- 
dous fissure  in  the  level  plain.  You  might  ride  your  horse  into 
it  in  the  dark  without  the  least  warning  of  its  existence.  It  may 
have  been  rent  by  an  earthquake,  perhaps  worn  by  the  action  of 
water.  I  should  incline  to  the  former  opinion.  It  has  shelving 
sides  composed  of  masses  of  rocks,  is  at  the  bridge  two  hundred 
and  thirty  feet  deep,  and  is  spanned  by  a  bridge  five  hundred  and 
forty  feet  long.  At  the  bottom  the  canon  seems  the  width  of  an 
ordinary  wagon-road,  and  there  can  be  discerned,  like  winding 
threads,  the  track  laid  down  by  the  bridge-builders  to  aid  in 


122  SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 

their  work.  The  moon  shone  brightly,  yet  the  view  was  broken 
by  deep  masses  of  shadow  in  the  depths  below.  It  was  strange 
to  look  down  from  the  bridge,  which  reached  to  the  middle  of 
the  chasm,  and  realize  that  the  great  church  of  Chihuahua  might 
stand  down  there,  and  yet  you  might  look  down  one  hundred  feet 
on  the  glossy  backs  of  the  swallows  that  flit  around  its  topmost 
spire.  Canon  Diablo,  the  Mexicans  called  it,  a  devilish  obstruc- 
tion to  their  journeyings,  causing  them  a  detour  of  many  miles, 
but  it  is  no  obstruction  now.  A  few  hours  after  I  left,  the  heavy 
iron  spans  were  swung  as  lightly  to  their  places  as  a  Mexican 
woman  lifts  the  earthen  jar  of  water  to  the  shoulder  at  the 
fountain;  and  by  the  time  these  lines  are  read  in  Kansas  the 
busy  locomotive  will  be  running  on  its  errands  to  and  fro. 

After  a  comfortable  night  at  Canon  Diablo  station,  the 
"chamber  that  opened  to  the  sunrise"  being  a  box  car,  a  last 
look  was  taken  at  the  great  mountain  which  stands  a  sentinel  at 
the  gateway  of  the  Pacific  coast,  and  the  backward  journey  was 
begun.  It  was  a  welcome  moment  when  the  train  passed  out  of 
the  plain  and  the  road  was  winding  about  again  in  the  sandstone 
defiles.  It  is  only  when  one  has  traversed  the  desert,  that  he 
realizes  the  beauty  and  force  of  the  old  oriental  simile,  "the 
shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land." 

At  Coolidge  the  hospitality  of  Mr.  R.  M.  Bacheller,  formerly 
of  Emporia,  the  station  agent,  acting  division  superintendent  and 
man-of  all-work  of  the  Atlantic  &  Pacific,  was  enjoyed,  and  a 
night  was  passed  in  the  late  home  of  the  "rustlers."  Coolidge, 
the  outgrowth  of  "  Crane's  ranche,"  has  had  a  stirring  history. 
The  American  frontier  "wolf,"  beside  whom  a  common  Apache 
is  a  scholar,  gentleman  and  Christian,  for  some  time  "held  high 
wassail"  as  Major  John  N.  Edwards  would  say,  in  that  locality. 
"Hold-ups"  were  a  daily  and  nightly  occurrence.  To  simple 
robbery  the  more  peaceable  citizens  submitted  for  awhile,  but 
when  to  robbery,  brutal  violence  was  added,  a  general  fight  took 
place.  At  the  conclusion  of  the  exercises  three  of  the  outlaws 
and  two  of  the  citizens  lay  dead  on  the  snow.  There  has  been 
no  general  killing  since,  and  Coolidge  is  at  peace  with  "  all  the 
world  and  the  rest  of  mankind."  On  the  beautiful  moonlight 


OUT   ON   THE   ATLANTIC   &    PACIFIC.  123 

night  of  my  stay,  the  crowd  that  gathered  in  at  "Hall's,"  (Hall 
being  the  alcalde  and  "Bascom"  of  the  place,)  though  "bearded 
like  the  pard"  and  profusely  ornamented  with  cartridge  belts  and 
"guns"  of  various  calibers,  were  on  peaceful  thoughts  intent. 
The  talk  was  of  home,  of  the  long-gone  hours  we  once  enjoyed 
with  the  brethren  in  the  grand  lodge  of  the  Sons  of  Malta,  and 
other  edifying  subjects.  The  town  presented  a  perfect  picture  of 
quiet  and  repose.  The  burghers  lay  on  the  counter  and  sat  on  the 
mackerel  kits  in  Hall's  store;  the  gamblers  listlessly  regarded 
very  small  piles  of  chips,  and  the  female  terror  of  the  Far  West, 
the  "Apache  Sal"  or  "Broncho  Kate,"  of  the  place,  sauntered 
about  in  slatternly  ease  with  her  cigar,  but  seemed  thoughtful, 
pensive,  almost  sad,  and  failed  to  bestow  on  her  gentleman  ac- 
quaintances the  usual  quantity  of  deteriorated  language.  A  few 
Indians,  poor  Navajoes  whose  untutored  minds  were  intent  on 
stealing  something,  flitted  about  in  the  moonlight  wrapped  in 
their  blankets.  A  few  revolver  shots  were  heard  occasionally, 
but  they  were  fired  at  random  and  not  on  business.  It  was  evi- 
dent that  over  Coolidge  hung  the  shadow  of  impending  reform. 
The  Eastern  novelist  in  search  of  material  for  a  gory  and  ghastly 
tale  of  the  bloody  caiion  or  the  ghost-haunted  gulch,  will  no  longer 
find  material  at  Coolidge  or  "Crane's  ranche."  So  runs  the 
world  away. 

Through  the  kindness  of  Superintendent  Angell,  the  rest  of 
the  return  trip  over  the  first  division  to  Albuquerque  was  made 
by  daylight,  and  the  journey  was  made  pleasant  by  the  society 
of  himself,  Chief  Engineer  Kingman  and  Assistant  Engineer 
Billings.  The  great  attractions  to  a  stranger  and  curiosity- 
seeker  are  the  lava-beds,  of  which  there  are  two.  The  volcano 
from  which  one  of  these  rivers  flowed  is  plainly  visible  near 
Blue  Water  station.  The  lava-bed  itself  has  been  partially  cov- 
ered by  sand  and  debris  and  vegetation,  its  course  being  traced 
by  huge  black  and  ragged  masses  here  and  there,  but  at  Grant 
station  the  lava  may  be  seen  as  perfect  as  on  the  slopes  of  Vesu- 
vius. It  runs,  or  did  run,  a  huge  stream,  twenty-five  miles  long, 
and  from  three  to  five  miles  wide.  The  railroad  runs  along  the 
verge,  where  its  course  was  finally  stayed.  It  is  as  if  from  its 


124  SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 

boiling  reservoir  a  tide  of  melted  asphalt,  ten  feet  high,  had 
swept  down  the  valley,  spreading  out  in  fan  shape  as  it  came, 
As  it  flowed  it  cooled  and  cracked,  and  tossed  and  surged,  like 
the  waves  of  the  sea.  The  burning  foam  hardened ;  the  furrows 
and  crests  of  the  waves  took  solid  shape,  and  now  it  is  a  black, 
petrified  river.  Bottomless  fissures  cross  it  in  every  direction ; 
ragged  points,  as  hard  as  iron  and  sharp  as  glass,  cover  the  sur- 
face. For  the  most  part  it  is  impassable  by  man  or  beast. 
Occasionally,  however,  there  is  a  long  wave,  smooth,  rounded, 
and  black,  looking  for  all  the  world  like  a  whale.  Along  the 
edges  of  the  bed  grew  shrubs  and  bushes,  which  looked  brighter 
than  vegetation  elsewhere.  I  have  been  told  that  the  lava  yields 
in  time  to  the  action  of  the  elements,  and  that  green  grass  grows 
where  once  the  molten  lava  hissed  and  flamed,  but  of  this  I  can- 
not speak  from  observation.  There  is  nothing  else  in  nature 
like  a  lava-bed,  and  the  traveler  over  the  Atlantic  &  Pacific  can 
see  this  evidence  of  earth's  mighty  convulsions  without  getting 
out  of  the  car.  In  fact,  the  lava  is  only  a  few  feet  distant. 

Another  sight  on  the  first  division  of  the  Atlantic  &  Pacific 
is  the  Indian  village  of  Laguna.  The  pueblo  is  like  all  others  —  a 
series  of  "dobes,"  running  tier  upon  tier  on  the  slope  of  a  bare 
rock.  Many  of  the  houses  were  in  ruins.  In  former  days,  when 
the  Pueblos  were  harassed  by  the  Navajos  an'd  other  wild  tribes, 
they  kept  within  their  works,  but  now  that  the  pressure  is  re- 
moved, they  distribute  themselves  along  the  banks  of  the  river 
that  irrigates  their  little  fields,  and  build  separate  habitations. 

Of  course  the  conversation  turned  to  a  considerable  extent  on 
the  resources  of  the  country  and  the  future  of  the  road.  The 
region,  sterile  as  it  looks,  is  yet  a  stock  country  of  considerable 
value. 

The  mineral  resorces  of  Arizona  are  undoubtedly  great;  but  it 
seems  to  me  that  the  great  value  of  the  Atlantic  &  Pacific  lies  in 
its  possession  of  the  wonderful  pass  through  or  over  the  Conti- 
nental Divide  and  its  consequently  easy  grades.  It  will  be  the 
through  freight  line,  if  my  judgment  in  such  matters  is  worth 
anything. 

The  tourist  will  travel  this  road  in  after  years  because  it  does 


OUT   ON   THE   ATLANTIC   &   PACIFIC.  125 

traverse  in  its  course  a  desert.  The  desert  has  its  attractiveness; 
it  exercises  an  indescribable  but  powerful  charm.  Thousands 
have  felt  it,  and  the  desolate  waste  will  forever  woo  men  to  its 
burning  breast.  In  a  short  time  the  road  will  be  within  easy 
staging  or  horseback  distance  of  the  Grand  Canon  of  Colorado, 
a  wonder  in  its  way,  like  Niagara.  Men  tired  of  trim  parks  and 
placid  lakes,  and  vapid  watering-places,  will  find  in  these  un- 
tamable wilds  something  to  stir  the  blood  and  linger  in  the  heart 


HOMEWARD    BOUND. 


No  MATTER  how  carefully  we  plan  a  journey  beforehand,  or 
how  methodically  we  measure  in  advance  its  days,  there  comes  a 
time  when  it  may  be  said  to  end  itself;  when  we  cease  to  look 
forward  and  begin  to  look  back  over  the  route  we  have  come; 
when  we  think  not  of  the  land  whither  we  are  going,  but  of  the 
land  from  whence  we  came.  The  traveler,  when  this  period 
comes,  in  spite  of  himself,  had  better,  if  he  can,  go  home.  Fur- 
ther journeying  is  a  weariness,  a  twice-told  tale. 

After  returning  from  the  visit  to  the  Canon  Diablo,  and  the 
confines  of  Arizona,  the  writer  felt  that  he  was  "homeward 
bound,"  and  the  little  that  remains  to  be  told  is  the  hurried  rec- 
ord of  a  journey  often  filled,  it  must  be  confessed,  with  thoughts 
that  had  nothing  to  do  with  present  surroundings,  and  oft-times 
completely  obliterating  them. 

From  Albuquerque  to  Santa  Fe  is,  to  the  readers  of  these 
letters,  old  ground.  The  return  journey  was  performed  entirely 
by  daylight.  It  was  breakfast  instead  of  supper  at  Wallace;  it 
was  noon  instead  of  evening  at  Santa  Fe,  but  nothing  of  inci- 
dent befel.  Santa  Fe  was  found  even  quieter  than  it  had  been 
left,  for  Governor  Sheldon  had  gone  to  the  southern  part  of  the 
Territory  and  taken  his  good  stories  with  him.  The  stage  for 
Espanola  did  not  start  till  next  morning,  and  there  was  a  long 
half-day  to  lounge  about  the  plaza  and  sit  under  the  portal  of 
the  Governor's  palace,  and  talk  to  the  old  man  Ellison  and  Mr. 
O'Neil,  of  the  old  Santa  Fe.  The  ghost  of  what  the  "regulars" 
call  the  "Old  Army"  walked  in  the  talk  of  these  elderly  gen- 
tlemen. It  was  curious  to  hear  them  speak  of  captains  and 
lieutenants  of  whom  I  had  never  heard,  except  as  generals. 
One  of  these  vanished  martial  figures  was  Bernard  E.  Bee.  He 
was  killed,  a  Confederate  general,  at  the  first  Bull  Run.  He 

(126) 


HOMEWARD    BOUND.  127 

was  the  greatest  military  dandy,  they  said,  that  Santa  Fe  had 
ever  known ;  more  precise  even  than  Sykes,  our  General  Sykes, 
who  died  in  harness  in  1881.  £j8JQFl  1IOJOU8CJ 

The  Espanola  stage  drove  around  to  the  Exchange  at  7  o'clock 
in  the  morning.  It  was  full  of  men,  young  fellows  who  had 
been  mining  and  prospecting  in  various  regions,  and  were  going 
over  to  the  San  Juan  country  to  try  their  luck.  They  carried 
guns  and  wore  miners'  garments ;  hence  it  was,  it  is  presumed, 
that  a  drummer  with  plaid  clothes,  and  a  big  stomach  like  a 
sample  trunk,  surveying  the  party  from  the  steps  of  the  Palace 
Hotel  (terms  $4  a  day,  charged  to  the  "house,")  said  he 
"  wouldn't  ride  with  that  crowd,"  and  remained  over  to  the  next 
stage.  Nevertheless  I  found  the  men  very  fair  company;  close 
observers  of  all  they  had  seen,  and  acute  in  their  judgments  of 
men  and  events.  One  of  the  men  gave  the  most  graphic  ac- 
count I  ever  heard  of  the  great  railroad  riot  at  Pittsburgh. 

The  twenty-two  miles  of  stage-road  between  Santa  Fe  and 
Espanola  is  what  John  Bunyan  would  have  called  "doleful."  It 
is  sand  and  rock,  piled  up  in  ridges,  endwise,  crosswise,  perpen- 
dicularly, every  way  —  a  rolling,  pitching  desert.  There  were 
water  and  trees  at  a  few  places  where  they  change  horses,  but  it 
is  desolation  for  the  most  part  The  consolation  of  the  traveler 
is  "looking  to  the  mountains  from  whence  cometh  help."  The 
great  range  which  runs  from  Santa  Fe  to  Taos  looks  down  on  it 
all,  and  gives  a  sense  of  protection. 

But  one  town  is  passed  on  this  road,  the  village  of  Santa  Cruz, 
on  a  little  river  of  the  name,  which  rushes  cold  and  swift  from 
the  mountains  to  join  the  Eio  Grande.  The  largest  building  is 
the  old  church;  the  largest  residence  is  that  of  the  priest;  and 
the  only  people  at  work  in  Santa  Cruz  were  some  men  engaged 
in  building  an  adobe  wall  around  the  priest's  garden. 

At  last  we  reached  the  Rio  Grande,  yellow  and  swift;  crossed 
it  on  a  low  wooden  bridge,  and  so  came  to  Espanola,  the  southern 
terminus  of  the  Denver  &  Rio  Grande  Railroad. 

I  doubt  if  there  is  in  the  confines  of  New  Mexico  a  more  se- 
cluded spot  than  Espanola,  even  though  it  has  a  railroad.  The 
narrow-gauge  appears  to  have  kept  along  down  the  Rio  Grande 


128  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

till  it  reached  this  lonely  spot,  and  then  said  "  There  is  no  more. 
Here  we  stop."  Had  it  gone  on  to  Santa  Fe,  a  real  goal  would 
have  been  reached.  As  it  is,  the  southern  division  of  the  Kio 
Grande,  from  Antonita  down,  reminds  one  of  a  fishing-line  with- 
out any  hook. 

The  banks  of  the  Rio  Grande  above  and  below  Espanola  are 
occupied  by  Indian  villages,  and  the  Indians  who  lounged  about 
the  depot  were  the  most  cleanly  and  refined-looking  Pueblos  I 
had  seen/  They  wore  bright  scarlet  blankets,  marked  "U.  S.," 
the  first  evidence  I  had  noticed  of  any  beneficence  of  the  Govern- 
ment. On  the  train,  which  stole  quietly  out  of  Espanola,  after  din- 
ner, was  the  first  comely  Indian  woman  I  had  ever  seen  during  an 
acquaintance — by  sight  —  with  Indians,  beginning  with  the  Sacs 
and  Foxes  when  they  lived  in  Iowa.  While  her  features  were 
purely  Indian,  there  was  that  expression  which,  wherever  we  see 
it,  we  call  womanly,  and  which  it  is  difficult  to  further  define. 
She  was  neatly  dressed  in  the  same  masculine  fashion  peculiar  to 
the  women  of  the  Pueblos,  and  was  modest  and  quiet  in  her  de- 
meanor, without  the  sullen,  stupid  look  common  to  the  features 
of  semi-civilized  people  when  in  repose.  Her  appearance  sug- 
gested a  train  of  thought  in  conversation  with  an  intelligent  gen- 
tleman of  Taos,  who  for  the  time  was  my  fellow-traveler.  He 
had  seen  much  of  Indians  during  his  long  residence  in  New  Mex- 
ico; had  served  against  the  Navajos  in  the  New-Mexican  regi- 
ments raised  by  Gen.  Carleton,  and  had  original  views  respecting 
Indians,  as  indeed  he  seemed  to  have  on  all  subjects. 

Taking  the  Pueblo  woman  as  a  text,  he  said  that  the  position 
of  women  among  Indians  is  not  generally  understood.  The  In- 
dian woman  among  the  wild  people  is  in  appearance  a  slave,  per- 
forming all  sorts  of  drudgery.  In  reality  she  has  a  better  brain 
than  the  male  Indian,  who  is  a  weak  animal.  The  squaws 
must  bear  the  brunt  of  the  campaigns,  and  Indians  rarely  go  to 
war  against  their  counsel.  It  is  the  women  who  invent  and  fre- 
quently execute  the  hellish  cruelties  inflicted  upon  captives,  in 
revenge  for  the  killing  of  some  relative  of  an  influential  squaw. 
Neither  are  Indians  incapable  of  the  "  tender  passion."  Indian 
songs,  like  the  songs  of  civilized  people,  are  not  only  of  war, 


HOMEWARD    BOUND.  129 

but  of  love.  The  Apache  "buck"  constructs  himself  a  sort  of 
flute  out  of  a  gun- barrel,  and  by  a  series  of  diabolical  noises 
on  this  instrument  he  strives  to  express  the  sentiments  which  agi- 
tate his  copper-colored  bosom.  Could  some  agency,  my  inform- 
ant thought,  be  brought  to  bear  upon  the  Indian  women,  they 
could  persuade  the  men  to  live  in  peace.  But  under  the  Indian 
rule  wives  are  a  matter  of  purchase,  and  most  horse-stealing  and 
plundering  raids  are  undertaken  by  young  men  to  supply  them- 
selves with  the  wherewithal  to  set  up  house-keeping.  Thus  it  is 
seen  that  love  not  only  rules  "the  camp,  the  court,  the  field,  the 
grove,"  but  also  the  desert  and  the  lava-bed,  the  canon  and  the 
mesquite  thicket. 

My  Taos  philosopher  left  the  train  at  Embudo.  The  car  seemed 
empty  without  him ;  in  fact  there  was  but  a  handful  of  passengers. 
When  the  narrow-gauge  is  extended  to  Santa  Fe —  a  work  now 
in  progress  —  a  circuit  will  be  established  and  a  route  will  be 
open  for  tourists.  A  run  over  the  A.  T.  &  S.  F.  from  Atchison 
to  Santa  Fe,  and  then  back  to  the  northward  over  the  Kio  Grande, 
will  be  full  of  variety  and  interest.  But  to  return  to  the  present 
journey. 

The  Rio  Grande  began  to  look  like  a  brawling  mountain  creek, 
and  finally  was  lost  to  sight,  and  we  commenced  the  ascent  of  the 
Comanche  Pass.  It  is  up,  up,  I  do  not  know  how  many  miles, 
clinging  and  climbing  along  the  side  of  the  mountain.  A  goat- 
path  could  hardly  be  steeper  or  more  devious.  We  wound  in 
and  out,  crossing  deep  ravines  on  high  bridges,  passing  through 
cuts  so  narrow  that  you  could  touch  the  sides  with  your  hands; 
then  holding  on  by  the  mountain's  side  along  a  straight  shelf  for 
some  distance,  affording  a  chance  to  look  back  upon  the  long  in- 
cline we  had  ascended.  All  around  were  mountains.  From  one 
side  of  the  cars  we  looked  up  the  straight  mountain-side;  from  the 
other  down  into  the  perpendicular  depths;  before  was  still  the 
steep  path.  At  every  turn  it  seemed  as  if  we  would  reach  the 
place  where  the  mesa  met  the  sky,  but  there  were  other  windings, 
and  it  was  up  and  upward  still.  At  last  we  grew  tired  —  ceased 
to  be  expectant;  the  road  might  climb  to  the  stars  for  all  we 
knew  or  cared.  But  at  last  the  hoarse  breathing  of  the  engine 


130  SOUTHWESTERN    LETTERS. 

ceased.  We  were  on  the  high,  level  mountain-top,  and  looking 
to  the  eastward  we  saw  a  great  plain.  Beyond  rose  a  heavy 
range  of  snow-capped  mountains.  It  was  the  plain  of  Taos,  and 
the  few  reddish  dots  near  the  mountain's  foot  were  the  town  of 
Taos.  Then  we  lost  sight  of  it,  and  were  in  the  pine  woods  of  a 
country  that  reminded  me  somewhat  of  the  "glades"  of  the  Al- 
leghanies.  There  is  not  a  town  on  the  line  between  Espanola  and 
Antonita,  only  the  railroad  houses,  the  section  houses  being  of 
hewed  pine  logs,  painted  red,  reminding  one  somewhat  of  Norway. 

At  Barranca  we  had  supper,  an  excellent  meal.  It  is  wonder- 
ful how  well  travelers  are  fed  in  the  most  out-of-the-way  places. 
The  railroad  is,  to  use  an  expression  not  altogether  unknown  to 
reporters,  "  the  prince  of  caterers." 

Night  found  us  on  the  high  plains,  with  mountains  in  a  con- 
tinuous chain  on  our  right.  At  Antonita  there  was  a  street  — 
the  first  we  had  seen  since  leaving  Santa  Fe.  It  was  like  coming 
out  of  a  wilderness.  At  Autonita  the  road  turns  off  to  Durango 
and  the  San  Juan  country,  and  the  Toltec  gorge,  and  the  cliff 
houses,  and  a  world  of  wonders,  but  we  had  ceased  looking  for 
these. 

A  change  of  cars,  and  we  sped  along  under  the  moon.  The 
conductor  was  obliging  and  instructive,  and  pointed  out  every- 
thing. Those  peaks  were  the  Costillas,  and  up  the  stream  a  few 
miles  once  stood  old  Fort  Massachusetts,  and  here  was  the  later 
Fort  Garland.  This  high  mountain,  its  top  showing  broad  sheets 
of  snow  that  glittered  in  the  light  of  the  white  moon,  was  the 
Sierra  BJanca,  and  this  and  that  peak  had  never  been  climbed ; 
and  then  I  wondered  why  we  did  not  have  an  "Alpine  Club"  like 
the  English,  to  do  that  sort  of  thing,  and  get  their  necks  broken 
for  the  benefit  of  the  newspapers. 

At  two  o'clock  in  the  morning  we  reached  Placer,  where  I  had 
determined  to  stop  over  and  cross  the  mountain  and  see  the  Veta 
Pass  by  daylight. 

The  morning  broke  clear,  and  it  still  seemed  like  New  Mexico, 
but  by  the  time  we  had  reached  the  summit  the  sky  was  overcast. 
It  seemed  as  if  that  mountain  was  the  dividing  line  between  two 
climates.  There  were  occasional  bursts  of  sunshine  as  we 


HOMEWARD   BOUND.  131 

climbed  down  the  pass,  but  masses  of  fog  hung  on  the  slopes 
of  the  mountains  like  smoke  from  a  battle-field.  The  pass  was 
not  as  rugged  as  I  had  first  expected,  the  slopes  being  actually 
like  New  England  pastures.  The  engineering  is  wonderful,  but 
the  originality  of  the  thing  was  detracted  from  by  noting  the  old 
wagon-road  to  Fort  Garland  winding  along-side.  We  have 
reached  the  point  that  we  naturally  expect  the  locomotive  to  go 
wherever  a  mule  can  climb.  The  "  mule-shoe  curve  "  is  a  striking 
piece  of  work.  At  the  time  of  its  construction  there  was  noth- 
ing like  it  in  the  country.  I  do  not  know  that  it  has  ever  been 
surpassed.  So  down  and  down  we  went,  without  jar  or  slip,  or 
more  untoward  motion  than  would  occur  on  level  ground,  and 
here  we  were  at  La  Veta ;  henceforth  we  were  to  cross  no  more 
mountains. 

This  road  on  from  La  Veta  to  Pueblo  takes  the  mountains  in 
reverse  that  I  had  seen  going  southwest,  and  I  had  hoped  to  see 
the  Spanish  peaks  again,  but  a  dull  bank  of  clouds  settled  half- 
way down  the  mountain-slope  and  hid  all  from  view;  there  was 
nothing  except  the  green  plains  and  streams  running  bank-full 
from  recent  rains;  all  was  cool  and  green  and  damp.  One  might 
as  well  have  been  in  Liverpool. 

The  next  day  was  passed  in  Pueblo;  full  of  new  brick  blocks 
and  bustle  and  Kansas  fellows,  and  not  only  white  Kansans  but 
black  ones.  In  every  town  in  my  travels  I  was  accosted  by  some 
colored  brother  whom  I  had  known  in  Kansas;  and  they  were 
among  the  most  active  and  wide-awake  of  the  population. 

The  "Old  Mortality"  of  Pueblo  is  our  old  friend  "Bona" 
Hensel,  who  erstwhile  made  the  sparks  fly  "  like  chaff*  from  a 
threshing-floor,"  in  the  blacksmith  shop  at  Seneca,  but  who  for 
many  years  has  beaten  the  newspaper  drum  in  Kansas  and  Col- 
orado. "Bona"  and  Mrs.  Bona,  who,  by  the  way,  has  studied 
hard  under  a  good  master  and  has  become  an  artist  of  celebrity* 
are  living  in  Pueblo,  having  built  half  a  dozen  towns,  and  risen 
and  fallen  with  as  many  mining  booms  in  Colorado.  Although 
it  rained  miserably  all  day,  mine  ancient  philosopher  and  friend 
went  the  rounds  and  explained  how  Pueblo  had  everything  and 
more,  too,  and  was  bound  to  be  the  great  city  of  the  mountains, 


132  SOUTHWESTERN   LETTERS. 

before  which  Denver  would  "pale  her  ineffectual  fires."  The 
most  impressive  sight  in  Pueblo  is  the  steel  works.  Iron  ore, 
coal  and  limestone  are  collected  at  Pueblo,  and  the  result  is  first 
iron,  then  steel,  then  steel  rails,  If  you  have  never  seen  steel 
made  you  should  see  the  process  at  Pueblo  or  elsewhere.  The 
molten  iron  is  subjected  to  a  blast  in  an  immense  holder,  hung  on 
bearings.  If  I  supposed  the  readers  of  the  Champion  would 
understand  me,  I  would  say  it  was  shaped  like  a  keno  urn — but 
to  make  the  matter  clear  we  will  call  it  the  nest  of  the  oriole. 
From  'the  mouth,  under  the  strong  blast,  flash  and  fly  such 
fireworks  as  never  human  pyrotechnist  made.  It  is  as  if  every 
wheat-head  and  straw  from  a  threshing-machine  was  turned  sep- 
erately  into  golden  fire,  yet  burning  so  as  to  preserve  their  in- 
dividual form.  When  this  fiery  broth  is  cooked,  the  great 
converter  is  tipped  easily  on  its  side,  the  purified  metal  flows  into 
great  caldrons  which  run  around  a  circular  railway,  and  the  metal 
is  drawn  off  into  moulds,  whence  come  the  blocks  of  steel  known 
as  "blooms,"  which  are  rolled  into  rails.  There  are  twelve  hun- 
dred swarthy  men  employed  in  these  works,  and  their  capacity  is 
being  doubled.  - 

In  the  wet  evening  as  the  sun  was  sinking,  the  famous  "  Santa 
Fe"  fast  train,  the  "Cannon  Ball,"  drew  up  at  the  Pueblo  depot, 
a  crowd  having  gathered  to  see  the  start.  In  a  moment  we  were 
off,  to  make  the  journey  from  the  mountains  to  the  Missouri  in 
less  than  twenty-four  hours.  Half  of  Colorado  and  the  length 
of  Kansas  to  be  traversed  between  sunsets.  At  the  great  speed 
one  would  expect  some  jar,  but  so  smooth  is  the  track  that  none 
is  perceptible,  and  you  can  only  realize  how  fast  you  are  going 
by  seeing  the  telegraph  poles  whisk  past.  All  night  while  we 
slept,  the  train  was  tearing  across  the  plains;  first  one  conductor 
and  then  another  walked  his  rounds;  the  engineer  and  fireman 
gave  place  to  others,  and  still  we  rushed  on;  over  high  embank- 
ments and  through  cuts  and  across  bridges,  and,  always  in  peril, 
yet  always  safe  because  of  watchful  eyes  and  skillful  hands  and 
hearts  of  oak  and  nerves  of  iron.  So  the  train  kept  on  its  swift 
and  tireless  way,  and  not  a  sleeping  child  or  timid  woman  woke. 
The  sun  set,  the  stars  rose  from  and  sank  into  the  plain,  and  the 


HOMEWARD    BOUND.  133 

day  came  again.  With  its  coming  I  woke  and  looked  out  on  a 
green  prairie  that  stretched  to  the  brightening  sky.  I  did  not 
know  what  stations  we  had  passed,  nor  just  where  we  were,  but 
I  saw  a  white  school  house  facing  the  rising  sun,  and  I  knew  it 
was  Kansas. 

It  was  hundreds  of  miles  yet  to  Atchison,  but  what  of  it? — it 
was  Kansas  all  the  way.  Villages  and  towns  grew  more  fre- 
quent ;  wheat,  oceans  of  it,  showed  dappled  in  the  sun.  The 
cars  took  on  passengers  at  every  stop ;  names  and  faces  grew  fa- 
miliar; here  was  Lamed,  Hutchinson,  Newton,  and  all.  Three 
hundred  miles  of  it,  and  all  good.  No  more  volcanic  mountains, 
wrecked  and  splintered  by  fire;  no  more  deserts,  no  more  dark 
people  speaking  an  unfamiliar  tongue;  no  more  cactus;  no 
more  yucca,  with  its  fierce  and  bayonet-like  leaves;  no  more 
goats,  with  their  ragged  and  swarthy  herdsman;  no  more  sun- 
baked adobes ;  no  more  mournful  old  churches,  with  their  harsh 
and  jangling  bells;  but  the  newest  country  and  the  best  —  our 
own  Kansas.  And  so,  after  three  thousand  miles  of  it,  this 
wandering  north  and  south,  and  east  and  west,  seeing  much  that 
was  interesting  and  strange,  and  new  and  instructive  to  the 
writer  —  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  not  wholly  without  interest  to  the 
reader — there  is  nothing  like  that  place  of  which  some  old  dead- 
and-gone  schoolman  has  written  in  a  forgotten  book : 

"It  is  not  doubted  that  men  have  a  home,  in  that  place  where 
each  one  has  established  his  hearth  and  the  sum  of  his  posses- 
sions and  fortunes;  whence  he  will  not  depart  if  nothing  calls 
him  away ;  whence,  if  he  has  departed,  he  seems  to  be  a  wan- 
derer, and  if  he  returns  he  ceases  to  wander." 


CAUTION. 


THE  undersigned  wishes  to  caution  all  who  may  be  tempted  to  purchase 
and  peruse  a  copy  of  this  book  against  doing  so  —  for  the  following  reasons : 

1.  You  may  be  amused. 

2.  You  may  be  interested. 

3.  You  may  be  instructed. 

4.  You  may  be  moved  to  move  to  Mexico  —  New  or  Old. 

5.  You  may  be  discouraged  from  staying  at  home  all  your  life. 

6.  You  may  find  out  where  to  go  to  get  richer  than  anybody  else. 

7.  You  may  be  induced  to  take  a  ride  over  the  Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa 
Fe  Railroad,  which  equals  a  journey  one-eighth  of  the  distance  around  the 
world. 

Any  one  of  these  catastrophes  would  be  very  bad,  and  so  the  advice  is 
given  not  to  buy  this  book.  W.  F.  WHITE, 

Gen.  Passenger  and  Ticket  Agent,  7  opeka,  Kas. 


